Introducing Stop Start Animation with KS1

Thanks to the people over at @appsgonefree I stumbled across the app Easy Studio, a week or so ago. Usually £2.49, this app was free for a limited time and so like any teacher having to work on a budget, I snapped it up as soon as I could. Sometimes these apps can be hit and miss and I tend to only go for apps I have seen being used in the classroom. At the beginning of our iPad journey, I downloaded endless amounts of apps with some being a complete waste of time. Now I am much more selective and really need to see something in practice before considering rolling the app out to every iPad. This app, Easy Studio, is a real gem!

 The app is a stop start animation app using shapes. Children can create animations by creating shapes, photographing them, moving them, taking another photo and repeating the process so that when all the pictures are played in a sequence an animation is created. The app has two sections; an easy and expert mode. The reason that this app is fantastic for introducing stop start animation to KS1 children is that the tutorials in the easy section really help the children understand the process of creating stop start animations before they try something themselves. This video demonstrates how it looks:





The expert mode allows children to change the size of the shapes, rotate an group them with certain templates to create animals, vehicles and people. They can then photograph and move their shapes to create an animation.This proved a little tricky for some however with a little more guidance, most of the class were able to put a short animation together. 

The children absolutely loved using the app and were mesmorised at seeing their final product. It has given me a great platform to now further some more work looking at stop start animation. 

After using the app, it really opened my eyes to the potential of using this app in other ways throughout the curriculum. As the app using shapes to create the animations, it opens a lot of potential to using the app in Numeracy. A lot of discussion about names of shapes and using shapes to create pictures before then animating them. You could set challenges where the children create animations based on their knowledge of shapes. Create an animation of a square, triangle and semi circle moving, growing and rotating. Once exported, the children could then import the video into iMovie to then record themselves discussing the properties of that shape.  Here are some of the examples from a Year 1 class using the app today:



For some further examples of Stop Motion animation please click the links:

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