Create Digital Pumpkins

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

Use Numbers or Excel to Create a Mystery Pumpkin Spreadsheet.🎃

A great way to introduce Apple’s Numbers program or Microsoft’s Excel program is to have students paint cells within a spreadsheet. Students will use the Format tool and fill the cells with colors to create a picture. Additionally, it’s a great way to reinforce columns, rows, or coordinates. Once students get finished with this, I always have students that want to create their own pictures by filling the cells with colors. This example below is using Numbers to create a jack-o-lantern, but this can easily be modified if you are an Excel user.

You can download the PDF with instructions here. halloween-picture-in-numbers

 

Use the handout to create this pumpkin.

Under the Format tool, click on the cell tab to fill a cell or cells with a color.

Hope this gives you some fun pumpkin inspiration all while learning how to use a new technology tool with your students! 🎃

Create “Home Row Pumpkins” in Pages

Want a fun way to get kids inspired to practice their typing skills? This activity allows students to learn some of the formatting features in Pages (you could modify this to use Microsoft Word, as well) and gives students the opportunity to practice typing using the home row keys. I encourage students to practice without taking their eyes off of the paper and to practice looking at the screen and paper rather than down at their keyboard. When they are finished following the directions, they will love to see what all of the letters have created!

Click on Home Row Pumpkin to download the instructions.

Here is an example of what the pumpkin will look like once finished.

Happy Halloween!!

Happy