Christmas photo story

In university we were shown how you can use a photostory programme as a tool for older children to display their work.  Using the programme they can annotate over the pictures and text.  I presently use the same programme shown by the Lecturer at the end of the summer term.  My team and I take photographs throughout the year, then gather them together to create a time line of the children's year in school.  I set it to music, relevant to children growing and moving on.  We then present this to the parents in an end of term assembly.  We sell them a copy for £5.00 and put the funds towards an item we require for our school.  My latest  purchase being a lithium battery camera. 
       The school provided us with an AA battery camera and once the rechargeable batteries went missing, I became increasingly out of pocket replacing batteries.  The children are welcome to use the camera, however they are only nursery age, and often forgot to turn it off.  We often found that on the occasion that you particularly wanted to photograph of something the children were partaking in, the battery would die, incredibly frustrating.  Hence why the purchase of a lithium battery camera was imperative, and if the children leave it on, hey ho.

I digress, back to the actual photostory programme, I liked the idea of using it for something else or than the photostory project at the end of the year.  Although at this time of the year amongst the mayhem of Christmas preparations in school, I was perplexed as how to find a relevant use for the photostory in to the planning.  Then it came to me, on the Christmas trip we take lots of photographs and often display them to the parents on an interactive whiteboard in the foyer, nothing particularly exciting, some parents take notice of it, others not.

This year with the help of the children we decided which ones we would like to place on the photostory, the children using a microphone, described what was happening in the photographs, what was their favourite part of the trip and in the photograph that they had taken with Father Christmas, they added in what present they had asked him for. 
With the help of some clever children in year 6, who helped me convert  a couple of Christmas songs from a CD in to MP3 format, and when I say help, I watched they did.  This is technology I am still getting my little brain around.  We created a photostory that involved the children and made the trip not just a one off thing.  It got them thinking and listening to others ideas and having to talk out loud in front of others.  They reflected on the day and funny things that happened.  They laughed a lot when trying to talk in to the microphone, and even sang a song. I would definately do this again, I could link it with key skills, such as Oracy and listening.
This years cohort are appearing to have a poor grasp on number recognition, perhaps we could use the photostory for a math project.

We did show the photostory to the parents, a few even asked for a copy.  Do I smell more money!