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.

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.