Animation with Reception (Early Years)

This was a day I was slightly dreading, animation with 4 and 5 year olds. But it was great fun, animating fuzzy felt, on the farm fuzzy felt, so didn't have to make models, was straight out the box animation. I worked with small groups at a time, four or five, there were times when some of them did it on their own, moving the farmer and then taking the required shots, counting together as the did, as a team. I worked with the groups for about 20-30 mins at a time.

We created short scenes, then added them together in iMovie and using a USB Mic on a Hue web cam we added our short script.

The animation day was held at Church View Primary School in East Barnet, London. The first of three days, introducing animation into different Key stages, with a focus on literacy, encoraging students to plan a story, write a script, acting out their script using iMovie and a Mic and then sharing their finished work.

According to the Reception class teacher the students had to watch their film about 20 times before they got bored!

So if you're planning on animating with reception you can't go wrong with fuzzy felt!

Sue Baylik From East Barnet LA, arranged my visits and observed the days, below are some of her thoughts on the various outcomes.

Visiting Oscar’s Animation Workshops in Barnet

When I visited and observed a series of animation workshops run by Oscar, I felt that what I was watching was what education is all about. Oscar worked with a YR class, Y6 class and a Y8 class.

The first obvious element present was enjoyment. Throughout the days, the learners were smiling and laughing while working happily alongside each other. There was no difficult behaviour to manage in any of the classes.

Leading on from this, was their ability to cooperate and support each other. One teacher spoke about how pleased she was as the class did not always work in this way. Also, at the end of the session, the learners were eager to look at the films of the other groups and were positive and enthusiastic about their colleagues’ efforts. Animated(!) discussion not argument was the order of the day. Some learners did have to be ‘helped’ not to be camera, animator and computer person all at the same time, but by the end all the groups were working well together. It was interesting to observe the dynamics of the very successful, focused groups and those who needed more TLC.