Boom cards introduction – The booming cards that both Educators and Kids love
Introduction
You may or may not have heard of boom cards. They are a great digital teaching tool suitable for kids from ages 3-18. Most of all it is free to make with the basic plan and use them too! Read on to find out more about tech enabled learning using boom cards!
What are Boom Cards?
Boom cards are interactive, self-checking, digital task cards that mostly educators use as a teaching tool. All you need is a device such as a smartphone or tablet.
The idea is for students to practice basic skills, such as letters and numbers or play simple educational interactive games with a visually stimulating experience via any accessible device.
Benefits of Boom Cards
For teachers, after they self create their own boom cards, students can complete them. Boom cards are self grading which saves planning and assessment time for teachers. Students can easily submit their answers and instantly get automatically reviewed and feedbacked. Teachers will also be able to keep track of the students progress.
They can be effectively used during virtual group learning activities or small focus groups for classroom.
As for parents, it is just another one of those tech learning platforms you can leverage on as an activity resource to keep kids busy.
Boom cards keep students and kids engaged in card based learning while going paperless. Most of all it is free to make and use – you will just need to sign up for a free account. The interface is also not complicated to use and simple to setup in no time. See below for further steps on how to setup an account.
The downside?
If you don’t want your child to be exposed to screen time for long hours it may not be good to introduce them to tablets or smartphones at such an early age. Hence keep boom card activities short and limit time young kids spend on devices.
Parents may not have that much time to create their own boom card decks, however they can definitely use ready made resources made by other teachers. Find the links below to download some free material that can be used as classroom or homeschool resources.
What kind of content can you make with Boom Cards?
You can make your own deck of boom cards and digital activity. As boom cards are interactive and you can make movable pieces, here are just some ideas you can “program” your Boom Cards to do.
You could make
- Flashcards or slides
- Puzzles
- Quizzes, questionnaires
- Stories or interactive storybook
- Digital tasks to complete
- Simple games
How do they work?
Boom cards is an online platform and can be accessed from any digital device such as smartphones or tablets via web browser. It is simple to setup. If students are using Google classroom they can easily login via Google classroom and access boom cards assigned to them.
Otherwise go to https://wow.boomlearning.com/signup and sign up for a free account. Sign in as a student account – you can use Google sign in. You can also go to the store and search for free downloads to add to your library and play.
How to create my own deck of Boom Cards
Simply, login as a Teacher account and start creating Boom Cards in “Studio”. It is advised to check out the guide here if you are keen to create your own Boom Cards.
Also you can create and sell Boom Card decks that you make online. If you’re selling Boom Cards there are quite a couple of things to take note of. Firstly, you are restricted to only selling them on TeachersPayTeachers.com (TPT) or the official Boom Cards website and not other platforms.
You will also need to get clip art to create your own boom cards and you’ll have to find free for commercial use clipart if you don’t want to pay for them. There are some available as free resources on TPT. For more info you can check out the following FAQ, Selling Boom Cards : Boom Learning Support
Where do I buy Boom Card decks?
You can buy them at TeachersPayTeachers.com (TPT) or https://wow.boomlearning.com/. After you have purchased a paid Boom Card deck, the links are embedded in PDF file from the purchase which you can add the decks to your library in your Boom Card account and use.
You can use Boom Cards for free but the paid account allows more functions such as the ability to get reports of student progress and activity, assign students to multiple decks or create an entire classroom of student logins.
These are only applicable to educators, so parents can really use the basic functions for free. For more information you can check the membership plans here.
Download Links to Free Boom Card Resources
You can find free resources available in https://wow.boomlearning.com/ or TeachersPayTeachers.com. Here are the steps to access them.
Official Boom Card Site (https://wow.boomlearning.com/)
- Sign in, register for an account if you have not already done so. You can sign in as either a Teacher or Student.
- Go to store and search based on free downloads
- Add to your library
- Go to your library and click to open the boom card deck
Teachers Pay Teachers (TeachersPayTeachers.com)
- Sign in, register for an account if you have not already done so.
- Search for your boom card topic in the search bar and filter price according to “Free”
- Download the Boom Card deck of your choice and you should download a PDF
- Click on the link to access the Boom Card Deck
Free Boom Card Download Links (Preschool Levels)
TotSchooling – Number Sequence
TotSchooling – Feed the Shark Shape Match
TotSchooling – Storybook Sequencing
TotSchooling – Seashell 2D Shapes
Conclusion
If you had not already tried Boom Cards, definitely try it out! It’s simple fun and a great addition to digital learning. Even though it’s more widely used as a teaching tool, it can also be used as a homeschool activity resource.
Do you like to use Boom Cards as a teaching resource and why? Share you comments and experience below!
For other Toddler Activity Ideas, you may visit the section here.
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