Shapgrams Logo filled with bones

Halloween and Shapegrams go together like costumes and creativity! In fact, October is the busiest month for Shapegrams. One reason is that we have a great collection of Halloweeny Lessons and Zippers. And I'm thrilled to tell you that we now have spooky Shapegrams Junior picture puzzles.

Lessons

Lessons include instruction videos and typically take a couple of half-hour sessions to complete. Here are the Halloween Lessons:

5 lesson thumbnails

Zippers

Zippers are short digital art challenges inside Google Slides. They don't include videos, but they do include design hints and helpful guidance. Here's the lineup of Halloween Zippers:

5 Zipper thumbnails

Stop Motion

The Digital Stop Motion Lesson shows students how to create and publish an animation by making incremental changes to their drawings in Google Slides. A popular Shapegram to animate is the Skeleton. I demonstrate how to draw the skeleton in such a way that it's posable, which is perfect for digital stop motion projects!

Ryan Gornall posted an animation by one of his sixth grade students. It's TONs of fun watching the skeleTON move.

Skeleton animation

Shapegrams Junior

Junior's Halloween-themed pictures include a cauldron, spider, black cat, witch, ghost, skeleton, and more. Browse the Halloween collection.

Grid of 12 Junior pictures

To get Junior puzzles to students, you need to put them in a playlist. Here's how:

  1. Click Make a Playlist.

  2. Select one or more pictures.

  3. Name the playlist.

  4. Choose the ways to play.

  5. Click Save Playlist.

  6. Copy the link, display the QR code, or print cards.

Students open the link and can start the first picture immediately because no sign-in is required. They aren't working within Google Slides or Drawings. Junior runs all by itself in any web browser.

Junior used to be hosted on Teacher Hive, but it's now part of shapegrams.com. For members, that means playlists are saved to your account, so you can access them from any computer. Pictures you've already used are marked, and members get access to all the pictures. There are still plenty of free pictures, but membership unlocks the complete collection.

There's still a Mini version, and any playlists you already made on Teacher Hive will continue to work. Moving Junior to shapegrams.com also helps me keep hosting costs in check while giving members more features. Let's just say Junior's server expenses were getting a little scary.

Have a faBOOlous month,
Tony

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