Circus Videos
Collaborate with your art teacher! Have your students use corks, wire, and other recycled materials to make circus figures. Students can then storyboard their circus act alone or in small groups. Finally, students capture their acts on video.
Resources:
FlipVideo: www.theflip.com/
A great deal on FlipVideo Cameras: www.digitalwish.com/dw/digitalwish/product?id=4310
Link on using FlipVideo in the Classroom:
www.mrwarner.com/2008/07/using-flip-video-in-the-classroom/
Storyboard Form: Circus Storyboard
Animating the life cycle of a plant
Second grade students study plants at our school. As a culminating activity they create a KidPix animation demonstrating their knowledge of how a plant starts as a seed, grows and flowers. The same process could yield an animation about trees.
Equipment needed: computer, color printer (optional) and projector
Software needed: drawing software such as KidPix or drawing software and presentation software (Keynote or PowerPoint)
1. Outline criteria for the animation.
2. Demonstrate “building” on a drawing. Start with a picture of the ground and sky and save as “plant 1.” Add a seed and save as “plant 2.” Continue in this fashion for a few more slides, asking students what else they need to add and saving in the same fashion.
3. Students begin working on their own pictures, building on each slide.
4. When all students have finished their slides, demonstrate putting them together into a slide show. Demonstrate changing the timing and the transitions between slides. For an animation, you want no transitions.
5. Assist students as they develop their slide shows and turn them into animations.
6. Print slide shows as a comic and allow students to cut and reassemble them to make a flip book.
8. Slide shows can be exported in the form of a QuickTime movie to be shared online or on a DVD.
