Museum School Animation Workshop: Before

Big Idea
Build thaumatropes and zoetropes, then try creating simple Microworlds animation

Time
Saturday, February 11th. 10:00am - 12:00am

Groups Participating
Museum school fifth graders, and Saafir

Plan
Introduction (Fifteen minutes)
Have the students "interview" each other and report out to the group. Make sure I learn the students names before they come. Talk about animation and let them browse some historical websites
Materials: Nametags, sample animation toy, flash animation example, projector, website handouts

Thaumatropes (One hour)

• Build thaumatropes. Give the students a challenge to create a thaumatrope that they all agree looks like a good superposition (but do not use that word under any circumstances). :-) Give them three levels of challenges 1) One object on top of another, 2) An object in a scene, and 3) One object inside another
• Get them to write down their observations about their creations a) what worked well? b) what didnt' work so well? c) why do you think this works?
• Introduce the idea of persistence of vision. Use a visual aid if possible

Materials: Straws, index cards, markers, stapler, three sample Thaumatropes, string, scotch tape, pencil and lined paper, an example of persistence of vision (movies?)

Microworlds (Thirty minutes)
Introduce the software on the projector. Have the program already up and a starting page loaded. Demonstrate how to add pages. Get them to create a simple flipbook animation and share out about it.
Materials: Four laptops with Microworlds already going on them, and the program, and sample flipbook going.