Creative Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

A spinning globe, a 3D Turtle, and a story of your world - there are many ways you and your students can celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day with FableVision Learning’s Creativity Maker Suite of online tools. 

When Earth Day was started on April 22, 1970, the impact of the movement saw 20 million participants. This day is important to help raise awareness to show how much of an impact we really do have on the environment by every little move we make. 

This year, as many of us are marking the day from in our homes, we compiled a few activities to get your little ones thinking about the environment around them.

Animation-ish

Animation-ish, is an easy-to-use online animation tool - that helps students show what they know! Weave Animation-ish into your distance learning activities with a few ideas:

Animate Different Cycles:

Encourage your students to animate as a way to explore different cycles. Using the tracing feature, students can easily animate the slow transitions that lead into new phases in any of these cycles. Whether it’s showing night shift to day or animating the parts of the water cycle, check out these examples below 

What are some other natural earth cycles that your class has studied? We want to hear from you about YOUR favorite Earth Day animations.

FabMaker Studio

FabMaker Studio, is our digital design and fabrication tool created to get students prototyping with paper. For more tips and tricks on how to use a printer and a pair of scissors, click here.  

Go Green with Greenie the Turtle! 

This FabMaker Studio activity is inspired by the book “Go Green!” from the Sydney & Simon series (Paul Reynolds and Peter H. Reynolds, Charlesbridge Publishing) and is a great way to explore ocean wildlife. 

In the book, Sydney and Simon learn about a turtle named Greenie who got sick from too much plastic in the ocean. This discovery leads them to find ways to reduce their waste and be more eco-conscious. 

In FabMaker Studio, encourage your students to weld together shapes to create a turtle. For an added challenge - limit the creation to two shapes. Want to do deeper? In the FabMaker Studio Ready-Made projects, students can print a 3D turtle project to design and modify. This project provides an opportunity for you to talk to your students about turtles and other wildlife while also exploring the STEM skills of fabrication.

BONUS IDEAS: 

1. Using the scraps of paper leftover from the project, create lily pads, or leaves for your paper turtle. 

2. Explore the shapes in FabMaker Studio to create fish friends for your turtles (or print them out using our 2D ready-mades)

Do your students learn about recycling? What other oceanic creatures has your class studied? Greenie would love to have more fabricated friends, let us know if your students create any other animals in FabMaker Studio, we’d love to check them out.

How will you be celebrating Earth Day? Share it with the FableVision Learning team via Twitter @FableLearn, or via email: info@fablevisionlearning.com

Creative Activities for Halloween

It is fall in New England. The leaves are turning shades of orange, yellow, and red and Jack-O’-Lanterns are popping up on doorsteps. This means Halloween is around the corner and at FableVision Learning we are getting creative with project ideas in made with our creativity tools. Here’s a few to get started.

Boo! Animated Pumpkins and Ghosts

Encourage your students to use Animation-ish to explore motion and story by creating a dancing ghost, or have your students animate their dream costume, or tell a joke on a pumpkin. What’s new: Animation-ish creations made in Flipbook-ish can be exported as a GIF.

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About Animation-ish: Animation-ish is an easy-to-use online animation tool that helps students show what they know! Whether you are doing distance learning, hybrid teaching or on site classes, you can weave Animation-ish activities into your lessons.

Mystery Monsters Made With FabMaker Studio

If your students can imagine it, they can create with with FabMaker Studio. In the Mystery Monster Blog Post, Dr. Peggy Healy Stearns, Lead Designer for FabMaker Studio, shares her tricks and tips for using the web-based design and fabrication program to combine, weld and morph shapes into exciting creatures. What will your students create?

Create a 3D “Mystery Monster”

But Wait. there’s more!

Jack-O-Lantern

The 5th graders in Palm Beach County, FL combined their FabMaker paper prototyping with circuitry to light up their paper Jack-O-Lanterns. Want a quicker fix? If needed, Peggy recommends substituting circuitry with LED votives.

Masks

Halloween is a great time to explore some FabMaker Studio Ready-Mades. There is a library of masks available to choose from.

Or you and your students can create your very own from scratch.

BONUS: for a more advanced mask, add 3D elements.

Looking to make a socially distanced Halloween a little more fun? Use FabMaker to create candygrams to give to friends- or even a candy corn garland!

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About FabMaker Studio: FabMaker Studio is our digital design and fabrication tool created to get students prototyping with paper. For more tips and tricks on how to use a printer and a pair of scissors, click here.  

How will you be celebrating Halloween? Share it with the FableVision Learning team via Twitter or Instagram @FableLearn, or via email: info@fablevisionlearning.com

Classroom Spotlight: Animation-ish, Integrity, Resiliency, & Perseverance A Lesson in Creativity and Life

This Animation-ish Spotlight was written by Robin Corbeil, a teacher at Litchfield Middle School.

How can we use technology skills to inspire the people around us to be better? This is a question I have asked myself for many years as a computer/technology teacher. One Answer: By encouraging and inspiring our students to take a risk and create something with the ISH philosophy. I challenged my students to become better people by connecting the themes of Resiliency, Perseverance, and Integrity to their lives in an “ISH” way. We hope you enjoy and learn from our Animation-ishes.

More about Me

I have been a computer teacher and technology support staff at Litchfield Middle School in Litchfield, NH for the past 14 ½ years. I was inspired when I first saw Peter H. Reynolds and the Animation-ish software while attending a technology conference in 2009. I knew this was a tool I could use to unlock the creativity of my students.

I loved the “ISH” approach of encouraging students and teachers to take risks and embrace the time needed to explore their creative sides. I introduce my Animation-ish lessons by modeling for my students, my limited animation abilities, with the famous line “it is tiger-ish” and that is ok. This little statement empowers my students to create their own ISH drawings and animations. My students always look forward to the use of Animation-ish as much as I do. These lessons are amazing because of how engaged the students are in creating and exploring their new skills and talents as well as furthering their understanding of various concepts.

My Plan

My use of Animation-ish in the past include, Internet safety, anti-bullying, reflection on learning experiences in other content areas, and Public Service Announcements.

This year was different because I had the chance use technology to help my students become better people through the use of technology. Our PBIS team’s, Positive Behavior Intervention Supports, focus is on expanding students understanding of Integrity, Resiliency, & Perseverance. Animation-ish was the perfect tool to really engage and connect students to these very important concepts. Students were given presentations in small groups defining and identifying what these types of qualities would look like in the students lives. It was easy to see these were important concepts in not only educating my students but, in helping them to become the best people they could be.

When introducing this project I reviewed animation skills students acquired last year using Flipbook-ish to establish and reinforce the skills they would need to bring their text to life. This was followed by a week of developing Advanced-ish skills, giving them options for their animation. Once my students had the necessary skills needed they reviewed the presentations and choose any still image/saying on Resiliency, Integrity, or Perseverance, they connected with for their Animation-ish project. The goal was to give the image/saying more meaning and develop a deeper understanding for themselves and other students. This process allowed me time to check in with each student and have really interesting conversations about their vision and help them focus their animation. Students were also allowed to come up with their own example if they choose to. If students were having trouble getting started I would ask them to tell me “What main topic their saying came from, Integrity, Resiliency, or Perseverance?” and them I would ask “What do you love to do?” and “What does that topic, Example Integrity, look like in that area?”  These questions lead to great discussions with students and a deep understanding and connection to these real life concepts.

Once students understood what they wanted to animate I modeled an animation by choosing the phrase “Bend Don’t Break”  using a fishing pole-ish, that when it caught a fish-ish, that was labeled bad grade, that the fishing pole would bend but not break. I stressed that my animation was not perfect and continued to evolve everyday into a better version. I often asked students their thoughts and opinions on my animation to encourage them to share with me as well as others. We were fortunate enough to have various staff members join our class to help students develop their animations. This was important because it showed students that I didn’t always have the answers or only perspective that mattered. They were encouraged to explain their vision/animation until it no longer needed an explanation. Once their animation could stand on its own and convey the message they wanted heard it was done-ISH. I hope you have enjoyed my students work!