3rd Grade Simple Machines Animations
Third graders in Ms. Leo’s class at Varina Elementary have been learning about simple machines (SOL3.2). Since simple machines involve motion, making animations is a great way to demonstrate and understand how they work. Today we used ABCYa! Animate to create short animations of the simple machines: lever, pulley, wheel and axle, wedge, inclined plane and screw. The students picked a simple machine to illustrate and then used the drawing tools and the clip art to design their animations. They could also use the text tool to label their machines. Most of the animations were just two frames long so they move kind of quickly, but you can slow them them down by clicking the Copy Cat button a couple of times for each picture. The students downloaded their animated GIFs, and I published them online. You can take a look at their projects by clicking here. UPDATE 2/3/15: Here are a few more examples from Ms. Middleton’s class at Holladay. UPDATE 3/25/16: I taught a similar lesson with Ms. Johnson’s class at Laburnum, but this time students had to identify each others’ simple machines in the comments. You can see those here.