Technology Tuesday: Nonstandard Measurement

Don't you just love it when you have an idea and after a couple of fails, you figure out how to do it?(sort of)  When my first graders study nonstandard measurement, I like to read them Leo Lionni's Inch by Inch.

In the past, I had pictures of the animals in the book and "inchworm" rulers for them to measure with. This year though, I wanted to try to amp it up a bit with the iPads.  I wanted them to use stickers of some kind to measure a picture.  I started off with the Doodle Buddy app, thinking they could draw the picture and then use the stamps provided in the app to measure.  The problem I ran into with this app was that I could not figure out how to move the stamps once I put them on the page.

Plan B:  Try it in my old, trusty, go-to PicCollage. 

Are there stamps?  No, but there are "stickers". 

Could I move them?  Yes and resize them!  

Could I copy them once I had a good size?  Yes, by double tapping on the sticker.  

So after reading the book.  I had the kids take pictures of each other from head to toe.  Then I walked them through getting their picture into PicCollage and showed them the features of the stickers.  For an added bonus, I had them add text.  Here are a few of the finished products.  

Are they perfect? No, but the kids got the idea that the stickers had to be stacked end to end and don't you love that Penny is 3 and a half arrows tall?  

How have you made a paper/pencil activity iPadable?