And five other great resources that I’m keeping in mind.
My teaching assignment has shifted a little this year. Aside from an odd schedule-filling PE class, I teach nine classes of ADST in fifth through seventh grades (three classes per grade).
ADST stands for Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies. It’s a subject that one of my edu-heroes, John Spencer, would surely love.
The curriculum is simple and flexible. On the competencies side is the design process: understanding, defining, ideating, prototyping, testing, making, and sharing.
On the content side are a menu of modules that teachers and students are free to dive into and explore. They include computational thinking, computers and communication devices, digital literacy, drafting, 3D design, entrepreneurship and marketing, media arts, robotics, and more.
It’s a thrill to go to these spaces with elementary learners.
Students at this age are fearless. They’re curious. They’re ready to create anything. And they’re ready to expand their creative powers.
If you’re teaching in similar spaces, here is a list of tools, design challenges, and creative tasks that I’ve tried and recommend (I have no affiliation with any of these brands, products, or sites).
7 Creative Apps That I Use with My Elementary Design Students
1. LEGO Design Challenges and Creative Tasks
- Partner building competition: tallest structure
- Partner building design challenge: our dream home
I am blessed to have access to six LEGO carts on wheels — enough pieces to keep a class of 25 busy. It’s the timeless classic that gets kids talking, collaborating, and having fun right out of the gate in September. Time will evaporate quickly as they get to work with this creative masterpiece.
2. Canva Design Challenges and Creative Tasks
- Google Classroom Header (a fun get-to-know-Canva activity)
- Learning Map Poster (selfie, family, passions, areas of growth)
- Other Posters: Remembrance Day, National Truth and Reconciliation Day, School Spirit Days
- Logos: My Personal Logo, Our House Team Logo
- Memes (positive messages that inspire others)
- Image Variations: Animations, AI-Generated
- YouTube Thumbnails
- Videos (yes, Canva has a video editor, including an enormous stock library)
- Comic Strips
Canva for Education accounts are free for teachers and their students — still an unbelievably good deal. If you and your school still don’t have these accounts, get on it immediately.
3. Pixlr Design Challenges and Creative Tasks
- Cropping
- Color and texture adjustments
- Background removal
- Object removal
- Object replication
- Layering
My students are having a ton of fun learning these skills in Pixlr, the web’s best free cloud-based photo editor. The freemium version includes some ads and a limit of three downloads per day — both tolerable conditions.
No accounts or logins required.
4. TinkerCAD Design Challenges and Creative Tasks
- 3D objects
- Printable objects
Save as a .PNG to share visuals with others, but save as an .STL to print your design in 3D. TinkerCAD allows me to create classes for my students, so I can view their designs in real time from my own account.
Completely free for educators and students.
5. Minecraft Design Challenges
- Build our school
- Build an ancient wonder of the world
- Design and build a secret base (a collaborative design challenge that received overwhelming interest from three separate seventh grade classes this year)
Minecraft requires Microsoft Education accounts for students. The good news is that it works well in the cloud, and students can collaborate on projects in real time — very cool.
I recommend co-creating success criteria and using Google Drawings as a place for students to cast their design visions before building.
You’ll never see higher engagement in your classroom. I mean, it’s Minecraft.
6. Khan Academy Creative Tasks and Learning Activities
- HTML and CSS course
- Javascript course
Because of the confined and controlled way that Khan Academy guides students from skill to skill in each coding language, it might look like a bit of a stretch to call these creative tasks.
But they are. There’s plenty of room for creative and fun interpretation at almost every step of the way through these courses.
Ready to help your kids learn to code? Check out Khan Academy — still completely free. (Here is how to create a class on Khan Academy and post assigned learning activities in Google Classroom.)
7. Common Sense Media (Digital Literacy) Learning Activities
- Fifth Grade: media balance, clickbait, gender stereotypes, digital friendships, cyberbullying, news literacy
- Sixth Grade: digital balance, phishing scams, online identity, chatting safety, digital drama, credible news
- Seventh Grade: my media use, big data, digital footprints, my social media life, upstanders and allies, cyberbullying, fair use
Common Sense Media remains an incredible curriculum with step-by-step lesson plans, PDFs, Google Slides, videos, and interactive learning activities. You’ll just need to log in using your teacher email credentials.
5 Other Tools and Resources That I’m Thinking About
A. PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs
My students have created incredible products and learning experiences on the back of this curriculum. They’ve been guided and supported from the very beginning of the design process to our entrepreneurship fair, post-fair accounting, and reflections by the incredibly talented homeroom teachers on my team. I can’t take any of the credit for using this resource, but I’m a huge fan.
B. Google Sites
It’s right in the Google Workspace, so why not use it? This year, I plan to build websites here with my fifth graders. Sites can be restricted to traffic within the domain, which is perfect for this age.
C. Wavacity
This site just came onto my radar this week, and I’m excited. It looks like a free, stable, no login sound editor. Although my students are too young to publish podcasts to the world, we should be able to have some good recording and editing fun with this app.
D. Cardboard Arcade
Years ago, I toured a school in Delta, BC that featured a middle school cardboard arcade. It was the capstone event for a fantastic design challenge that combined cardboard arcade games with probability-related standards in Math.
I’d love to try something similar, but I’m working with the limitations of tight classrooms and short periods. Storage and clean-up realities are formidable obstacles in my current context, and I don’t have answers yet.
E. GCF Global
It’s been a few years since I’ve used this site, but GCF Global offers some pretty incredible free courses and resources on the subjects of computer facts, skills, and science. Click any one of the headings here and you’ll get the idea.
One catch: in its current form, this is basically straight content — no room for creativity or design. But it does offer a solid pathway to learning in the area of computers and communication devices — one of the Ministry-prescribed modules in ADST.
That’s it so far. What am I missing?
If you’ve read this far, you’ve got interests in this teaching space or know someone who does. Thank you for joining me, fellow nerd.
I have questions for you.
Which tools or apps am I missing?
What are the creative riches that I should be sharing with my elementary students?
Let me know.
In the meantime, let’s keep designing, creating, and tinkering, educators.
Let’s introduce our students to the creative life.
Teachers on Fire 