Creating+Claymations

Creating Claymations
This page has been created to support a Lead Teachers Workshop on Creating Claymations. Feel free to use it afterwards to show examples and resources to children and other teachers.

Clay Animation is not at all a 'new age activity'. Clay animation began a short time after the invention of plasticine. Plasticine was invented in 1897, and one of the first actual films to use clay was in 1902 using clay for lightning sculpting. This was one of the first steps for clay animation, but it took six more years to make a film that used clay animated sculptures. This happened in 1908 when //A Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Nightmare// was released.
 * HISTORY:**

Claymation is also referred to as 'Stop motion' probably because you have to create a series of still shots to construct your animated movie.

According to Tonya Witherspoon and Dr. Marsha Gladhart (International Reading Association (IRA) San Francisco, CA, April 2002) Bridge the transition from pictures to text Develop visual literacy skills Discriminate and interpret action and images Critical observation skills Improve the quality and quantity of children’s writing (pre-writing, storyboarding, editing) Encourage critical thinking (which looks better? What happens next? How do we…?) Support multiple intelligences Give feedback on efforts to construct meaning Encourage collaboration and cooperation Build problem-solving skills Support project-based learning Develop sequencing and order concepts Demonstrate spatial sense in relation to self and environment Describe an object in relation to another using positional language Use language effectively to describe concepts Work co-operatively in small groups Encourage descriptive language Build observation skills Require captions that say a lot with a few words Encourage students to be actively engaged in constructing meaning (asking questions, researching, discussing) Provide a purpose and a stage (any child can be a star!)
 * WHY CLAYMATION?**
 * Computers help children learn**
 * Animated language activities**

media type="youtube" key="t4_ouSbOHOk&rel=1" height="355" width="425"** When making claymations with children I always show them an episode of Bob the Builder so that they can look at the features of that 'claymation'. It helps them build their scene and consider what they need for their storyboard etc. [|Clay and Stop Motion Home Page] [|The Clay Animation Station] [|Claymation Made Easy] [|Clay Animation Made Easy]: A great wee site that takes you through step by step, with links to other support at each step [|Tech4Learning]: A great site that even has downloadable storyboard outlines and rubrics etc [|Claymation in 5 easy steps] - especially made to upskill teachers! [|Wikihow]: Using Movie Maker to make claymations [|Teacher Tube]: if you search 'claymation' in Teacher Tube you get a large number of wonderful examples that you can show students - made by students. [|Apple Teaching Practice]: A site that gives you a variety of links, useful if you were using this as a Visual Arts unit and were looking into the history and variety of animations [|Historical Event]: A unit plan that is used for children to recreate an historical event in claymation! All the resources are here to use - including links and documents.
 * How to make a claymation - A very simple explanation!
 * Resources:**

Of course there are many others also! Just google Claymation "how to" or Stopmotion "how to"

I have had children create claymations with much success in the classroom. Here are some of my resources - planning, reflection sheets, storyboards etc. Feel free to use them!