The Library Voice: First Grade Authors & Illustrators Creating Their First eBook

I love seeing art work and books that young people have created. I love to read the words, look at the pictures, and talk to them about what they have created.

And they love creating books just as much as we love listening and looking at them.

When the 1st grade teachers and I were collaborating a few weeks ago, I saw that one of their standards in September was "All About Me".

I asked more about this and what they were doing in the classroom.

They had created "Who Am I" posters with their families at home, which were hanging in the hallway.

We talked about how much the 1st graders enjoyed creating online books last year using Little Bird Tales and FlipSnack. We would scan in the illustrations and then they would record their voice over the top. These created wonderful eBooks to share with each everyone at school, their families, and others. They were always so proud of having a part in these eBook projects we did throughout the year.

So we decided to kick off the year with a very special "Who Am I" eBook created by our very own 1st graders. We would use the "Who Am I?" posters and....

the portraits they drew to go along with them in the hallway.

The students would then create a digital portrait as well using TuxPaint. They have experience with TuxPaint when they used it last year to create the illustrations in the Our Iowa Animal Research Project FlipSnack eBook.

You can read about how they used TuxPaint in their kindergarten eBook here.

On the First Grade Symbaloo, I added two tiles to support this project.

To start out the day when they came to library yesterday we watched the video tutorial TuxPaint With Eve and Regan to refresh what we knew about the digital tool. Regan and Eve created this last year when they were in 1st grade.

All of the kids had their "Who Am I?" posters and portraits with them so could look at them if they needed to.

This is Devin, who is also shown in the pictures at the top of this post, using TuxPaint to draw himself. I love how his self portrait turned out. He included the best details too.

I used Devin's poster and two self portraits to try out which tool was best for this project.

We created the title page using a website called ReciteThis.

I decided to use FlipSnack because the entire image can be viewed when uploaded onto a page. To capture their voices over the top, I will use Camtasia Relay and upload it into our EduVision channel at Van Meter.

Here is our eBook in FlipSnack from SnackTools. It is called "Who Am I?".

It is going to be such a fun eBook to create with all of the wonderful posters and pictures. Then to have all of them talking about themselves over the top of the pages will be perfect.