Kindergarten Life Cycle Animations
Kindergarten students at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about life cycles (SOLK.7c), so today, Ms. Gouldman’s class used ABCYa! Animate to create animations of the butterfly life cycle. First, we reviewed the stages a butterfly goes through–from egg, to larva, to chrysalis (metamorphosis), and to adult. Next, we went to ABCYa! Animate, and I showed them how to use the paint tools to draw some butterfly eggs in frame one. We looked at some pictures of butterfly eggs on the Internet so they could see the size and color of them. I pointed out that many butterfly eggs were laid on plants. Why do you think that is? Then, we went to frame two and drew the caterpillar. We looked at caterpillar images online to see the incredible variety in their colors and designs. We continued with the other stages, looking at photos of each stage, and then drawing our own creative ideas. When we were finished, we slowed down the animation using the frame rate button (bottom right), turned on looping so it repeated, and pressed play. The students were excited to see their butterfly move through each stage. Since it loops, it also shows how an adult lays more eggs and the life cycle repeats itself. Finally, we exported our animations as GIFs, and I uploaded them to a Lino page. Lino is similar to Padlet for sharing files, but since I’ve reached my limit on Padlet for the free account, I had to find something different. You can see all their animations here.