Arts

Why study animation with kids? Because it's a great vehicle to help them better understand storytelling and sequencing ideas, whether in words or pictures. Simple animation techniques are fun, hands-on projects that incorporate play, creativity and collaboration. Because the underlying processes are the same as for video, animation projects are a powerful way to help kids understand and prepare for more sophisticated media projects.

Kids love to draw. When they're young, they take to it without fear or self-consciousness. Usually we adults are the ones who protest that we have no talent, so we're sometimes just as afraid to teach drawing and painting as we are to teach unfamiliar technologies. Yet, we teach writing without thinking ourselves the next Hemingway, don't we?

Students will create a class book. Students will use visual mapping to brainstorm the theme of the book. Each student will create a page in the book.

DESCRIPTION: This winter we made quilts and delivered them to the sick children at the Inova Fairfax Hospital. We used the computer to look up the website for Project Linus, http://projectlinus.org. It's an organization that collects quilts and blankets for the children.

Once you've introduced the basic compositional forms of drawing, this is a fun activity for taking the next step. It's also a good community-building activity and an excellent step toward preparing children for drawing on the computer. In this activity you and the kids will draw simple shapes to copy.