Our Connection With Chromville Is Bringing So Much Fun To Our Kindergarten Researchers

I am very excited to write this post and tell you about something new!  It is called Chromville!  

                               

A few days ago my awesome friend Drew Minock, shared a post about Chromville on Facebook and Twitter.  I always love seeing what Drew recommends because he integrates augmented reality throughout his classroom every day.   

Our students have been super excited about using different AR tools like Layar, Aurasma, and even the apps with our Sphero's.  I knew they would love Chromville too!  

When I visited Chromville online, I fell in love with this augmented reality game which takes place in the ancient world of Chromville.

The little characters from Chromville are just great and the story behind what children will do within the app is wonderful.  It will truly engage them in using augmented reality as they work through the pages and create their own stories too.

As I planned my time with our kindergarteners on Monday, I really wanted to introduce them to Chromville.  

To make it even more meaningful, I asked my new friends from Chromville, Hector and Daniel, to Skype with our students. 

When I told the little ones what we were doing, they were very excited and couldn't wait to meet our new friends in Zaragoza, Spain to learn all about Chromville.  

I had my friend Gabe hold up the app on the library iPad as Hector and Daniel talked about augmented reality and Chromville.  It was helpful for the kindergarteners to see the different parts of the app they were talking about, so we followed along with them.  

It was also exciting for our kids in Iowa to speak with two people in another country so far away.  We have never Skyped with anyone in Spain so this was new fun too.

Hector and Daniel explained to all of us the story of Chromville and how we would be using the app with special coloring pages for different villages within Chromville.

Hector and Daniel colored a part of one page and then showed us how to use the app to see the story come to life.  They were so excited to see the character dancing on the page to music as they scanned it with the Chromville app.

They couldn't wait to get started too!

Diana and I had lots of the coloring sheets from each village copied so they were able to choose which one they wanted to color.  They used markers and crayons to color the characters and setting on their page.

They asked a lot of questions and were curious about what would come to life in their picture.  We couldn't wait to find out.

Once they were finished coloring, they opened up the Chromville app and picked which village their page was from.

They then held it above the page until it became green.  

That is when it came to life!  

They were all very proud of their work and wanted a chance to scan their page too.  

                           

The loved showing Chromville to Mrs. Prouty when she stopped by the library.

There are lots of different things you can do within Chromville.  When they use this again on Friday, I will show them how to take photos of their creations.

We will then use this with our Iowa Animal Research Project coming up.  One of the villages in Customizable so we could create our own characters to use in Chromville.

I was thinking that they could create a little character to represent the Iowa animal that they will be researching.  They can pay attention to the color, special characteristics and even the surroundings of the animal.  

We can then use their Iowa animal pages in an augmented reality story which we can create using LittleBirdTales.  This will be such a awesome way to bring their new knowledge from research into play with augmented reality. 

I can't wait to see and hear what they create using Chromville as their inspiration.  And I can't wait to learn more about their Iowa animals this way too. 

And all of you will be able to scan their coloring pages to see the characters and villages too.  

Thank you Hector and Daniel...and everyone at Chromville.....for connecting with our students in Iowa and for bringing us such a wonderful new augmented reality tool.

This is going to bring lots of fun, creativity, and a voice to our kids.