Just because everything is blooming, I decided to upload a selection of flower photos. You can print these out in a fairly large size to hang up in a classroom. However, if you plan to use them in an activity or on a web page, you will need to re-size them in a graphics application.

Visiting A Petting Farm takes students on a virtual exploration. They can go to see all the animals on the farm in whatever order they wish. They also have a chance to feed and pet the animals, and when they do, they hear the sound the animal makes. When they decide to leave, students hear all the animals sound off together to bid them goodbye. Bonus: Puzzles and Photo collection!

For beautiful nature photos, take a look at a website by John P. Sercel. John has set up an online gallery of images including mountains, water, wildlife, flowers, and more. And you can download them free! I’ve put a link to his page under the Free Stuff links you will find when you scroll down and look in the right-hand sidebar of this page.

Snow includes two anchor books, a sequencing activity, and a phonics activity using some of the “ow” words from the Snow story. There are also cloze activities in some formats. The Snow story uses photos and movies to illustrate a perpetual winter problem for those of us who live in cold areas: What can we do with all this snow? Making A Snowman answers that question! Bonus: All 7 photos used in Snow and 14 more, plus clip art!

The Tides Pools activity set includes so much material that I have broken it into two separate study units. The first unit, Tide Pools, includes Exploring Tide Pools and two supporting books. Exploring Tide Pools is set up so that students can wander through in any order, finding exciting discoveries along the way. The second unit, Tide Pools Writing And Review, includes the tests and three writing activities. Bonus: Vocabulary Cards and a Photo Collection!

Digital cameras, graphic editing applications, and multimedia applications are natural partners. But with so many choices for graphics formats, resolutions, display size, and print out size, it can be very confusing! The tips in Pixels and MegaPixels, Oh My! will hopefully make it a little easier to get those graphics into a project. Bonus: Example Photos and tutorial!

Ten Trucks uses photos and a “red fish, blue fish” style vocabulary to engage beginning readers and help them work with adjectives. There are all kinds of truck photos, ending with a very cool custom painted truck. Students use errorless and guided writing activities to work with adjectives. In the highest level writing activity, My Cool Trucks, students custom-paint their own cool truck images and write about them. Bonus: Lots of truck photos and clip art to download!

Mountain Bike Race takes the reader to the top of a mountain and down the trails to the bottom on a mountain bike. The reading level is 3rd to 4th grade, but the story would interest older students as well. The reader sees the scenery from a bike rider’s viewpoint, and movies of the bike coming up the lift, the racers starting down, and the end of the race make this a vivid and real experience. Bonus: Collection of photos from the story, plus extra mountain scenes!

Feathers is a science activity explaining how birds and people use feathers. Movies let students see close-up views of birds in flight, a diving bird, and penguins walking about on the ice. Then photos of many different feathers challenge students to guess which bird they belong to. Each feather photo leads to a page with a photo and movie of the bird. Bonus: Collection of the bird and feather photos used and a set of off-computer match cards!