Technology Tuesday: We are Illustrators

In kinder we have been talking about authors and illustrators for a few weeks now.  Last week, we read the book It's a Tiger by David LaRochelle.  

The students love calling out "It's a Tiger!" whenever the boy sees something that doesn't belong.  I love the illustrations in this book and after checking out Jeremy Tankard's website and how he uses ink and digital media to create his illustrations, I found the perfect app to try and replicate his technique.  So after we read the book last week and talked about the illustrations, I told the students that we were going to be illustrators like Jeremy Tankard but it was going to be a two-week process.  First we had to draw a tiger in our Library Journals (read more about my kinder journals here).  I found a step-by step guide to drawing a tiger and then using my airliner slate, I drew on the screnn while the students followed along.  Now, remember these are kindergartners so there was a wide range of tigers 

but as long as they tried, we were OK with what they drew.  

So this week, we reviewed how Jeremy Tankard illustrates and then they found their tiger drawing in the journal.  We then opened the Crayola Lights, Camera, Color  app.  

I was projecting my iPad onto the screen, so the students followed along as we started a new picture and then took a picture of our tiger.  The classroom teacher and I went around and helped the kids who needed help holding the iPad and taking the picture.  Then the app has a "vacuum" tool that sucks the color out of the picture and leaves an outline (our pictures didn't have any color on them but you have to do this step to go on).

Then the fun begins.  After you click the orange arrow and get past the stickers, a marker wheel appears at the bottom of the screen.  Students choose a color and with their finger color their illustration.  

Again, there was a wide variety of coloring, but I was going the experience ;)

All in all, I was please with the lesson and using the iPads with kinders this early in the school year.  And they loved being illustrators!