Turning our buildings into a city and green screen stop motion movies!!

After we completed all of our lovely 3D buildings, we combined them into a giant city from each classroom. We painted poster board to become the sky behind our city. Then the kids had to collaborate on where their building would fit into their classroom's city. 

After the buildings were installed, the students added "props" that they made with paper and glued onto the city. I used writing as an analogy. The buildings were the characters, the sky was their setting......now what "props" could they add to make their story come alive?

So many adorable faces in the 3D glasses they decorated!!

A completed city.

After the entire city was installed, story lines developed and props made to bring the city's narrative to life......we worked in small groups and made movies with the Stikbot stop motion app using a green screen. SO, super FUN!!!! The city was going to be their background so their stories had to take place in their 3D city.

Each small group developed a mini-problem/solution story map and then brainstormed how they would act it out. We took pictures of our cities and loaded them into the app. Now it looked like we were actually inside our 3D cities.

Reviewing their movie.....look at that cute grin ;).

Movies complete! A classroom photo for the end of our 3D investigation.

Making a 3D city

I've attached a LOT of pictures to this post. Instead of writing a few long paragraphs about what we did during this project, I'm going to add captions to explain our process.

One of my all-time favorite books!! We talked about what an architect is and I explained that we would be pretending we are architects during the next weeks. We had a discussion about the types of buildings we see in our communities. They chose a building type they would want to design and then completed research to find out more about their building category.

Kindergarten research papers complete, along with preliminary sketches.

Next, we attempted to build our building out of blocks.

So cool!

I photographed each of their buildings to use for reference later.

Now we used the photographs for observational drawing. I wanted them to eliminate the background so they could focus on the building only. This was a great opportunity to talk about background, foreground and subject. They took black Sharpies and "blacked out" the entire background.

They carefully studied their building photographs and replicated what they saw in their photo.

Good stuff!!

Now we start to use what we previously learned to make our drawings 3d! They painstakingly traced their drawing first in red, then we moved the paper slightly, then they traced it again in blue. We are on our way to special effects!!

I love!!!!

 

Tracing is complete- let's add color! At this point they wore their glasses off and on, checking to make sure their drawing was giving them the 3d effect they desired. I loved the process of continuously checking.

I know you can't see it online but, with 3d glasses on, this looks like it is really popping out at you!

We begin 3D!!!

 I was over the moon when I found that you can buy boxes of pretty cheap 3D glasses on Amazon- who knew 3D glasses would be cost friendly for teachers?! This began a long, incredibly fruitful lesson on how to make 3D drawings. We taught the kids about how their eyes perceive 3D images (Mrs. Slats taught me about the parallax effect ;)). Then we explained how to make a drawing that will pop out when you put 3D glasses on. Using red and blue is key but, almost as important, using alternating color or pressure can really enhance the effect. Here are pictures of our first few class periods in this project when we researched and practiced making 3D images.