Kindergarteners at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about baby animals and how they look different from the adult animals, and sometimes they have special names (K.7d). Today students in Ms. Gouldman’s and Ms. Haskins’ classes created animated images showing a baby animal turning into an adult. First we brainstormed different kinds of animals and their babies so that we had a variety of ideas. There are also some great websites you can use to review: Cricket (match the baby to the adult), National Wildlife Federation (show what a baby will look like when it grows up), BBC (match the baby animal to its parents), National Geographic (baby animals memory), and Turtle Diary (help the adult find the baby). After our review, the students chose the animal they wanted to illustrate. Then we went to ABCYa! Animate, and I showed the students how to use the drawing tools to draw a baby animal. Next, we clicked the second frame at the top and drew the adult version of the animal. We slowed down the animation with the speed button and set it to loop so it would repeat (just like a life cycle). Finally we pressed the Export button to save it as a .GIF file and uploaded it to a Padlet so we could see everyone’s. You can take a look at their animations here.
