Fourth graders at Davis Elementary have been learning about the motions of the Earth in science (SOL4.8) so today students in Ms. Bennett’s class created animations showing how the Earth revolves around the sun. I posted a link to ABCYa! Animate on their Google classroom page and showed them how to draw the first image using a space background and two circle shapes for the sun and Earth. We discussed the relative size of the circles (SOL4.8d) and which direction the Earth moves around the Sun–it’s counterclockwise (SOL4.8a). Then I showed them how to label the objects with text boxes and group them so they move together. Next we used the copy cat button to make a copy of our image, and we moved the Earth a little bit. We continued making copies and moving the Earth gradually until we had one revolution. We set the animation to loop and then published it as a .gif file. The students posted their finished animations to the classroom page and I gathered them together here. You can also see examples from Ms. Lara’s class at Holladay Elementary here.
