Five for Friday - Teaching Animation

Happy Friday Everyone!

I can't believe how quickly this week off school has flown by. Back to school on Monday for 38 more days...

Over the holiday I have been planning our unit of work on animation and searching for great animation lesson ideas. This was not something I was looking forward to doing but now that I have thought about it and found some great ideas, it looks like it will be fun!

My Five for Friday are some of the things I have planned for us to do each week...

We will begin our work on animation by making thaumatropes! I stumbled across the Youth Learn site which had some good information here. Our topic is Travel and Transport so we will each pick a different type of transport to animate. I've made a simple one to show them (please don't judge my drawing - it was just a quick example so they can get the idea!). When I spin it, it looks like the people are in the bus and that the bus is on the road!

We will then make flick book animations. Again, we will link this to our topic so I have made a (very) simple example of a hot air balloon either rising or landing (depending on how you flick it). I've laid it out as it would show when flicked here because I can't show it moving in a photo!

After making our flip books, we will move on to cut out animations. I haven't had a chance to make one yet but I'm thinking of one static background and a simple car moving across the page (or the sky with a plane flying across). This is a lovely animation that I will show my class:

Paper Cut Out Animation on Vimeo

I also got some good ideas and liked the clips on Moving Image Education.

Next it will be Stop Motion Animation (a great chance to watch some too!). I haven't decided yet if we will use lego, teddies or plasticine - any thoughts? This is a useful clip from BBC Learning Zone Class Clips to show the class before we get started:

BBC Learning Zone Class Clips

I do also like the idea of a huge whole class 'Art Attack' animation which I just found here.

If we have time we will also explore Pivot Stick Animator. Simon Haughton's Website (which I have used for planning other great computing lessons) has some great information about using this in the classroom. I used Pivot with much older children a couple of years ago and they loved it. I'm hoping my 6-7 year olds will be able to enjoy it too!

I'll keep you updated on how we do with these activities each week. 

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If you've had success teaching animation or doing any of these activities in your class, please leave a comment below - all tips and advice will be greatly appreciated!

Have a great weekend!