Stop-Motion Animation - So easy a 3 year old can do it???

Pinspiration:  Tinkerlab

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With all the testing this week, my students were mentally exhausted.  I thought to try some stop-motion animation with them to give them a brain break as well as let them play and learn a new tech skill.  I have to say, I was quite impressed with what they came up with.  I started my lesson by dumping a bunch of my kiddos toys on a table in my classroom and told the kids to play.

It was quite heartwarming to watch my 6th graders play with my 1 and 3 year old's toys.  Then I introduced stop motion by showing the students the simple videos on the Tinkerlab site.  Then we watched the intro to Gumby (I know it's not the original) and discussed other movies that used stop motion.  (Check out the top 10 Stop-Motion movies.)  Finally, we watched two different "how to" videos on using movie maker to create stop-motion videos.  The best part, they were made by kids who sounded like they were about the same age as my students.  Check them out here and here.

A few of my students had already played around with stop motion.  The next day in class, many of them brought in toys they claimed to have not played with in years to supplement my toy supply to create a short 5-10 second video (we only had limited class time this week).

Since many of my students didn't have Moviemaker, they got resourceful.  Some students downloaded a Stopmotion app onto their iProducts.  Others found websites.  Flipgram was the most user-friendly site they found.

Here are a few of the videos my students came up with:

Using Flipgram (Please stress the importance of keeping your camera completely still.)

One made on MovieMaker:

I showed my little guy the videos my students made with his toys and he had to try one.  It was very easy for him and he enjoyed taking the pictures.  However, he did not enjoy the post-photoshoot production.  Here it is:

I had to get in on the action too:

Well, I hope this has been helpful.  Until next time, happy STEMing!