Thoroughly Enriched!

Yesterday saw our first ever Enrichment Afternoon in school. The children were divided into vertical groups for an extra-curricular extravaganza! Sounds fun right?

The Plan
I signed myself up to do some stop-motion animation (a daunting task in just two hours!) Planning was the easy part, watch a story start clip about toys that come to life and film the ending. Our only issue would be time,so you can imagine my reaction when, 24 hours before the event, we were told we'd actually only have an hour and a half!

Resources
We used TuffCams to take the stills and the children brought in toys from home to be the stars of the show. The stills were quickly pieced together using MonkeyJam and then the finer detail was added using Textease Movies.

Result!
Despite everything, I was extremely happy with the outcomes. The children had fun, learnt some new skills and the product was fantastic! Only a child could come up with Wildmutt climbing a rope up the side of the photocopier. Time restrictions meant there was no time to watch the full movie back from the beginning but hopefully the children will share their first attempts at film making in classes on Monday!

Popped Art

I was recently looking for a free digital photo editor in which you could change the colours of certain objects within the image for a class topic on pop art. I came across a few useful websites suitable for a variety of abilities.

Photo Op is a digital camera simulator. A child can adjust the settings on the camera, zoom in or out and pan round the scene before pressing the shutter button. The application then becomes an image editor where you can adjust colour and apply a variety of lighting effects.

The art gallery at Poisson Rouge has various examples of artwork that can be edited very simply by clicking on parts of the image to change the colour.

Tuxpi allows you to upload your own image and it will instantly create an Andy Warhol style pop art collage. A similar tool can be found at Pixenate. Select the show fun effects option.

Why not upload your finished art work to the Tate Modern website? I can't think of a more fitting way to share your masterpieces!

Boowa & Kwala

To get a true kids opinion of the web, it's so handy to have two of my own at home. Harry, an eight year old computer savvy miniature palaeontologist, and Emma, a six year old,in her own words, 'princess' have become my personal taste testers, so to speak.

So this weekend it has been the turn of Boowa and Kwala, an odd combination of gravel voiced, blue dog and yellow koala with a certain degree of oo la la about her. At first glance you might think this kid friendly website might be a little on the young side for my two, but on the contrary, they loved it! The songs were a particular hit with Emma, who is going through that little girl phase of non-stop singing, be it High School Musical or Pixie Lott! The lyrics option meant she could sing along with any song... instant gratification for her... bit of a headache for me! Our personal favourite had to be Hello Mister Squirrel, it's hard not to sing and wiggle along!

My favourite feature is the TV series option, which brings up over sixty short animations, all of which would fit nicely with common early years and key stage 1 topics. Each animation has two interactive games, a song and an activity idea that goes along with it. Handy huh? The Special Occasions button brings up a calendar with animations organised into months. We recently used the 'Festival of Lights' song for our Diwali celebrations at school. Also worth a gander is the First Clicks area, an early ICT programme, a good selection of games organised by skill, ranging from mouse roll over to using the keyboard. A winner all round!

Earthquake 3D

Stumbled across this free software download on cnet.com. Really quick and easy to download, it allows you to view live earthquakes around the globe. There are a few options to customise the display, filters for magnitude and date, but really simple for the techphobic amongst you. A must have accompaniment to an earthquake topic!