Animation in Yr2

This afternoon I visited an infant school to celebrate the work they had done for arts week. We noted that a few years ago the idea of just doing art for a week was inconceivable, but how good it is that this is now, not only possible, but desirable. The head teacher and I recognised the cyclical nature of innovation and looked back with nostalgia at the 1967 Plowden Report which informed our early teaching. Those under 50 who don't know what I am talking about can get the text of this report online and get ahead of the game.

I was particularly interested to see some animation work by Yr 2. Talking to the teacher I learned a lot about how they had done this. It was a simple animation with dialogue rehearsed in a drama lesson. The animation was made with an ordinary digital camera and the images were imported into Windows Movie Maker. Talking to the children confirmed that they had quickly taken over all the processes including editing.

It is obvious when you know, but it had not occurred to me before, that it is so much easier if the sound track is put in before the images. It is a lot simpler to adjust the length of time images are on the screen than it is to edit sound. In this animation the first thing that went into the movie was the dialogue - recorded directly into Movie Maker.

The second thing that became apparent, was the role of the interactive whiteboard. Movie Maker may be simple entry level software, but these were Yr 2 children and the underlying concepts are complicated. However, the teacher was amazed at how quickly and easily they took to using Movie Maker on the whiteboard. We recognised that it must be the fact that the process of dragging and dropping clips into the time line and then stretching, or squeezing, them to fit was a physical activity, done using their hands, was what made it seem so straight forward to the children.

We also noted that it would be possible, and perhaps easier, to use simple and cheap animation software rather than Movie Maker for stop frame animation. This might include 2Simple2Animate or Revelation Sight & Sound .

So I am grateful to the teachers of Iver Heath Infant school who reminded me of Plowden, gave me some good tips about animation, and showed how very young children can be quite comfortable with ideas and software that we think will be far too complicated for them.