Homework 10.3. Lesson Idea: Stop Motion Exploration

***THE FIRST 55 SECONDS ARE JUST THE TITLE SCREEN! FAST FORWARD!***

After completing my Stop Motion Animation project, I wound up babysitting for a day because the children were off from school, and I decided to share my little video ("Eye Wish: A Little Monster Story") with the six year old whom I watch. He was really into it, and wanted to know all about the process, how I made the movie, and how I was able to "make the things look like they moved." I asked if he was interested in making his own Stop Motion film, and he was!
He and I spent about 30-40 minutes playing around with moving a bath bomb around a piece of paper, which Jake then decided to add colored marker to, leading to the piece's eventual title, "Bath Bomb with Colors." The entire concept of the piece (and it is very conceptual) was conceived by Jake himself, with little intervention from me, aside from helping with the setup and explaining how to work the equipment (his iPad) and the computer programs (iMovie) that we used to edit with. When we uploaded the piece to the computer, Jake also experimented with adding sound (he recorded his voice over some of the piece, but eventually chose not to include this in the final cut). He also was a bit dismayed that the movie itself was so short, so he chose to add (specifically!) 55 seconds of a title screen with music, and (specifically!!) one minute and two seconds of an end screen, also with music. He was very specific about these time lengths, despite my asking if he really needed it to be that long. He did. 55 seconds, and one minute and two seconds, specifically.
Overall, I had a great day with this kid and he was really proud of his piece. He had no prior knowledge of or experience with the stop motion animation process, and I though this was a really accessible way of just letting him explore and work out the kinks on his own, which wound up working really well! The entire experience lead me to think about a lesson plan that I could do with kindergarten or first grade students (Jake is 6), and so I've listed my ideas for a Stop Motion Exploration Lesson Plan below.

Stop Motion Exploration:
Age Group: Kindergarten or First Grade. No prior experience with stop motion animation needed!
Learning objective: Students will learn that they can give still photographs the illusion of motion through the stop motion animation process, using 2D and 3D materials, iPads, and a simple, free Stop Motion application.
Activity: Working in pairs or small groups, students will experiment with stop motion animation using 2D and/or 3D materials, an iPad, and a simple (free) Stop Motion Ap (i.e. I Can Animate! Lite).

Within this lesson, I would likely give a motivational prompt that does not focus on the narrative element of film-making; rather, I would simply encourage children to explore the process of stop motion itself. To do so, I would give a prompt that focused on both movement and materials, for example, something like: How can your object move from one side of the screen to the other? How can you make your object look like it is spinning? How can it look like it is dancing?
Working in teams, students would collaboratively experiment with different techniques as they relate to these objectives, which they could later apply to a larger stop motion animation project that does focus on narrative and the telling of a story through this medium.