Stop Motion: Prepare the Story

As I have mentioned, the Stop Motion project was in collaboration with an upcoming music performance.  The theme is 'a long time ago'.  They will be singing songs like Clementine, and Oh Susanna.  I took one song per class and had each group choose a section of the song to represent in their Stop Motion.  Here is a worksheet that helped organize this portion of the project.  (click here)

As you can see... The document starts out by asking the students to write their table color, Teacher Code and each name.  They are then instructed to write/glue their lines into a section.  We then talk about the Set, Characters, and Props.  This document was created after trial and BOMB!!  I just told the kids to work as a team on all jobs.  I found that giving a name to head up each of the parts of the project was helpful.

The SET:  

The set is the background of the stop motion.  It allows the viewer to know where the story takes place. 

The Props:

The Props are things that you want in the scene.  These are objects that will not move around.

The Characters:

The Characters are the people, or animals in the story that you are telling.  Characters move around in the scene.

Teacher Notes:

I found the set to work best with two 8 1/2x11 inch tag board taped together.  This allowed it to stand well, and it also filled the screen this way.  Another advantage to this size is it allowed more then one student to color it at the same time.

As you can see the props were designed and bubble cut out.  A paper clip is opened to the shape of an 'L' and taped on the back of the tagboard props and characters.  Some students wanted something in their story to be flying and we used a wire to make this happen.