Jennifer Bolton is married with two boys, both special needs. She is the owner of the Special Needs in Homeschooling. Jennifer uses free resources for teaching whenever she can, to keep her boys’ interests and to tailor their learning experiences to their individual learning styles and special needs.

Name of Product: Big Huge Labs

Link to Product/website: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

Jennifer’s Description of Product: Big Huge Labs lets you create interesting and unique items using your favorite photos.  This tool has so many possibilities, it is difficult to summarize everything in this post!  I will focus on a few of the more educational items, but be sure to check it out for some fun!

Create calendars, movie posters, your own magazines covers, a mosaic and much more!  Create your own personalized maps for free! You can make your own personal inspirational poster for your favorite charity or just to cheer your children on. Use their map to get sunset and sunrise times for any location on Earth which makes a fun geography project.  You can even add fun items to your photos to make your journal or scrapbook more appealing!  Use the trading card maker to design your own deck of trading cards!  Use the jigsaw puzzle tool to turn a photo into a puzzle.  Once finished, you can either download the puzzle, print it and cut it out; or purchase your 252 piece jigsaw puzzle through Big Huge Labs and have it shipped to you.

Membership to Big Huge Labs is free.  Membership is not required, but if you do become a member the system will store all of the photos that you upload to use with their tools so you will not have to upload them each time.  Your most recent lab creations are saved for you and you can re-download them or share with others.

Homeschool Uses: There are so many educational possibilities with this tool - for all ages!   Big Huge Labs is just that, a BIG HUGE LAB that can be used for any subject. Think of the possibilities with those difficult to teach children! Learn about maps by creating your own. Teach language arts by making your own word poster of consonants and vowels. Create a bulletin board! Make a mosaic of your last field trip or make your children their own Press badges to be reporters for Language Arts class or use them as child ID on homeschool group field trips. The Cube is a fun way to turn pictures into a fun history game. Just put a historical picture on each side of the cube and give it a roll! Print the cubes as a set of dice, roll them, and then add, subtract, or multiply - a fun way to teach math facts!  This tool is wonderful for any type of learner and it is a great way to enhance creativity in a mess free, economical way.

Jennifer’s Experience Using the Product: My boys and I had a blast making this movie poster! We just put in the url of this picture we found through Google images and uploaded. It was easy and fun. The best part was picking a movie title.  Their creative minds were coming up with the best ideas!

For more ideas on what you can do with Big Huge Labs, check their How to Videos.

Summary: I have utilized this tool daily since signing up and my boys are always asking if they can play with Big Huge Labs. It is now a reward for them! If you try Big Huge Labs, please share the creations you made with us!