Stop the Motion!

One of my favorite activities to introduce in third grade is Stop Motion.  Every year they do some sort of stop motion animation project and from there, they add the idea of stop motion to their tool belts for future projects in other grades.

We use the free iPad app Stop Motion Studio, the kids work in partners, and we start from the ground up.  Kids first animate their names, then we bring in the clock and they review telling time, before finally heading into their project.

This year, third grade doesn't have iPads.  

But we didn't let that stop us!

Enter Stop Motion Animator for Chromebooks.  It's definitely clunkier.  It doesn't have as many features. And taking pictures with Chromebooks can be a bit tricky.

But it works.

So this week, third grade got to play with Stop Motion. 
They still got the concepts, the ideas, and the exposure to the simplicity of creating animations.  

Was it as fancy?  As easy?  Nope. 
Was it as fun?  Yup. 
Will we revisit it again next year?  Absolutely.

Oh.  One more thing.  There are two version of Stop Motion Animator in the Chrome app store.  I prefer the one that has187+ reviews.

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