Happy fall, y’all! 🎃 I’ve shared these activities in quite a few different variations through the years and it’s always a hit with kids! Essentially, one activity is using the tools students have (Apple tools or Google Tools) to practice home row typing to create a pumpkin. The other activity is using the tools students have to paint cells in a spreadsheet to create a pumpkin picture.

Which tools do your students have? Once you know which tool you want to use, print the instructions or have students split their screens so they can have the instructions on one side and the activity on the other. It’s always fun when they complete the activity and their creation comes to life. Activities such as this inspire students to challenge themselves to create their own directions and then determine if classmates can use the directions to create their mystery picture!

Home Row Pumpkin Typing using Pages (Mac & iOS)

Home Row Pumpkin Typing using Google Docs

Create a Mystery Picture in Numbers (Mac & iOS)

Create a Mystery Picture in Google Sheets

What kid does not love emojis? I came across this website byrdseed.com/emoji and thought this would be a great lesson for my students. I feel strongly that our kids don’t have enough creative writing time, so I wanted to give them time to dig deep into their creativty. I recently introduced my students to their Google accounts, so I thought this would be a great way for them to explore writing in Google Docs. I instructed students to open their documents and then create a new tab so they could go back and forth from the emoji prompts to their document. The kids absolutely loved this project and the stories they wrote were creative, witty, and fun to read.

This is what the emoji prompts look like once you start clicking “and then”

How It Works:

Each time you click “and then” users get a new emoji to include in their story. I had my students take screenshots of their emojis when they were finished and include them in their document under their title. Additionally, I had the students underline the word that corresponded to the emoji they used. I found it interesting how students interpret what the emojis are…because they certainly are open for interpretation! Here are a few samples (screenshots) from some of my students! Super fun writing activity and they all gave it two enthusiastic thumbs up! This lesson combines lots of useful technology techniques with creative writing.