DIY Tagul Clouds

Happy Techy Tuesday everyone! It's Robin from Class of Kinders, here with a little creative way to use technology to create a gift for your kiddos. Today I want to share something that I did leading up to the last week of school using a website called: tagul.com. You can easily sign in with a Goggle, Twitter or Facebook account. My students have spent time all year learning about character traits. So, I decided to use that background knowledge to discuss character traits of friends in our classroom.  We began by brainstorming tons of character traits. They came up with words like hard working, friendly, playful, courageous, smart, and creative! Once we came up with a chart full, I asked them to think about these words and each one of their classmates. I gave each student a simple 3 column grid. The first column was for a classmates name. The second column and third column were for two character traits that described them. Students walked around the room and paired up with each friend and said two character traits to them and even explained why - which someone pointed out - were just like compliments. (Yes, we were ONLY focusing on the POSITIVES for this activity!) After they paired up and gave their compliments, then they wrote those two words for each classmate on the grid. Afterward, I collected them.  I took them home and went through each one to find the character traits that popped up the most for each friend. For example: many children wrote that Emma was: smart, creative and helpful so I typed in "Emma" along with words: "smart," "creative," and "helpful" in the website I mentioned earlier: tagul.com

After entering the words in the top blue box, I played with the different settings: shapes, fonts, layouts and colors (clicking visualize each time)  until I got exactly the one I wanted for each student. Then I printed it in color.

Now, I did have to adjust the printer setting so it would print a little smaller (75%)  because I found these cute little colorful frames at Walmart.com for a little over a dollar. They fit perfectly inside!!!

So there you have it! A gift for each student made by you and their classmates. I do have to say, the kiddos were so excited when I gave them out the last week of school. They ooooooh'ed and aaaaaaaaaah'ed over each one.  Seriously! This went so well, it will totally become an activity we do each year, leading up to the last day of school.

Thanks for getting "techy" with me today… :-)