Aliens Invade the Art Room

For the last two weeks, 2nd graders have been experimenting with animation in the art room. The first project focused on flip books creating a ball bouncing. Now, students are using the Doink Animation App on the iPads to create a running alien in four poses. The idea for this project is not originally mine, but from Tricia Fuglestad, an elementary art teacher at Dryden Elementary in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Tricia Fuglestad's blog, Dryden Elementary Art Website

 File provided by Tricia Fuglestad on her blog.

Using the Doink iPad Animation App, 2nd graders drew an original alien in four sequential poses to create the illusion that it is running. Once completed with four poses, students added the alien to a composition of a photo from the art room to give the illusion that the alien is entering from the left and exiting to the right of the photo and running rampant within our art room!

Composition directions for Alien running loose in the Art Room.

Once students are finished with their alien running in the art room, they may make a 2nd composition within DOINK choosing either to draw a 2nd alien (with four new poses) running in the art room or draw the alien's home planet and add the first alien running to the home planet in a new composition. If students finish composition two, they may make a third composition of their own free choice.

Norman Rockwell Tells Stories using Images!

Norman Rockwell's process of creating an image is very similar to directing a scene in a movie. In this 2nd grade lesson, students relate Rockwell's images to the basic elements of a story including setting, character, and plot. Second graders will be using these same elements to tell their own visual story in one photograph. To inspire students, we examined the many photographs that Norman Rockwell hired as resources for his illustrations. Did you know that almost all of his paintings began as photographs?

Norman Rockwell"s Photographic Eye by NPR

Using a planning worksheet, students worked in groups of 3-4 at their table sections. A word list was provided to help choose elements for their setting, objects (to assist in storytelling), and characteristics. Groups drew a simple storyboard and a brief description explaining what will be going on in their photograph (plot).

Smithsonian American Art Museum Teacher's Guide page 56

Storyboard

Next week, students may need to bring objects from home to help with their storytelling or choose from available items in the art room if appropriate. Once their idea is planned, one student assigned as photographer (from each group) will use the camera app on the iPads to photograph their group in front of a green screen for a still frame photo expressing their planned story while the rest of the group pose and act as characters within the scene. An image from the internet will be saved to the iPad and used as the backdrop (setting) to replace the green screen and appear as if they are truly within their setting. Here is a great tutorial on how to use the Do Ink "Green Screen" app from a classroom teacher in Norfolk, Nebraska. Do Ink "Green Screen" will be the app we use for this project.

Scavenger Hunt (Rainbow Club Day Reward)

My 2nd graders earned over 40 Rainbow Club points for the month of September and were rewarded with a "Design Elements" scavenger hunt activity.  I found this nifty "design elements" scavenger hunt at The Art of Education (AOE) and tweaked it to fit my classroom needs, including images next to some of the words for my lower level readers. Students used iPads and worked in groups of three to four students to find the items on the list, zoom in close, and photograph. We not only searched the art room, but traveled all the way down to the main office looking for items from our list.

Next class period, working in their same groups, students will create a word photo collage using the images from last class period's scavenger hunt. The app they will be using is called WordFoto. Students will find an image and use the bolded word from the scavenger hunt list to fill the image with words (see example below). I hope to use this app again for other projects in the art room. I have some great ideas for the future, the possibilities are endless.

This example below is one created by a 2nd grade student's photo. She selected this fire alarm because it was a rectangle and found it in a hallway on the way to art. In WordFoto, she selected the image from the photo library on the iPad, cropped it, and created a new word set with "rectangle".  The app does the rest!