What it is: Build Your Wild Self is a website I heard about on A Geeky Momma’s blog (which I thoroughly enjoy!). The site fits perfectly into my classroom this week as our Book Fair theme this year is “Safari”. The site, created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium, lets students create a character called their “Wild Self”. Students can choose a character and then add crazy hair, arms, legs, etc. to make them wild. There are even fun sound effects for the different backgrounds they add!
How to integrate Build Your Wild Self into the classroom: This would be a great site to use with students after reading a book like “Where the Wild Things Are”. Students could create their own Wild Things and write themselves a Wild Things story featuring themselves. This is also a great site to use with kindergarten and first grade students who are learning about different animals. As they build their Wild Self they can name what animal the crazy part belongs to. Older elementary students also enjoy working on this website, my students created a wild self for their safari passports for our book fair this week and really enjoyed it from kindergarten through fifth grade.
Tips: The Wild Self can be printed out, sent to a friend, or saved as a desktop.
Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Build Your Wild Self in your classroom.
I used this site while incorporating a research project on animals for Kindergarten students. They were required to obtain a fact about a animal of their choice. This site was highly engaging, and worked off things that the children loved. Children are so animated these days, and lessons need to be just as animated as them. The students obtained their fact by picking an animal part to add to their wild self, and at then end of their design the program described their animal part in detail and told exactly why the animal needed the part. For example if they added giraffe hoofs to their animal, the program told the students that a giraffe hoof gets as big as a dinner plate so they can get rid of a lion with one kick! Afterwards the students could pick a zoo website from a list of 5 and explore some more. What a great website! THANKS!!!!