Creativity and Technology- How to Guide Young Children to Make an Animated Story?

Seriously, can young children make animations?

Animation can be expressive, artistic, and creative. It is also a common type of communication. People may think making an animation is impossible for young children. In fact, with organised guidance and engaging materials, they can learn the idea of animation, and create a simple one on their own. Just as the American psychologist Jerome Bruner suggests, any subject can be taught at any age with structured instruction.

This article is to explain how to teach young children animation with structured guidance. I'll use Bruner's theory of spiral curriculum to design guidance for you and your children. I know the 'spiral curriculum' might sound too technical. In order to make it easy, I'll explain it in five concrete steps for you.😊

Before we started, I'd like to introduce the great tool we're going to use. It's a Free, kid-aimed, and educational App- Khan Kids. If you haven't downloaded the App, please read our article to set it up. 

Alright, buckle up, let's start our journey.

Step 1.
Familiarise Young Children with the User Interface

We all know that we need to understand the basics before we create. The same goes for young children. Please give them plenty of time to play around and explore the user interface.

You can show them how to tap their avatar, the 'Library' bottom, and the 'Create' bottom. Then, scroll the page to see all the colouring and canvases. Then, turn off the app, hand your device to your children, and let them do what you just showed them. When they familiarised themselves with it, we can move on to Step 2.

Step 2.
Explore Colouring and Its Tools

Whether your children prefer colouring or drawing on a canvas from scratch, the purpose of colouring is to let them know how to use the 5 tools: 'colours,' 'eraser,' 'stickers,' 'undo,' and 'save.'

Please let your children choose one picture to colour, meanwhile, encourage them to try all the tools.

• colours: Encourage children to tap the crayon on the top-right, and swipe the bar on the bottom to choose colours. Then select a colour and tap the space they want to colour.

• eraser: Tap the eraser on the bottom-left, and tap a colour on the picture, to see what will happen.

• stickers: Tap the crayon on the top-right again, this time click the bear icon, and you'll see the sticker bar on the bottom. Children can pick a sticker they like, drag it to a space, and use two fingers to adjust its size.

• undo: Learn the arrow that points left means 'undo.' Use undo when they want to revise their colouring.

• save: When their work is done, tap the tick bottom on the bottom right to save the colouring. 

Please allow young children to take their time and mess around. By repeating using the tools, they can form more ideas about creating their own drawing later on.

If your children are confident using the tools, we can increase the complexity a bit more, and move to next the step.

Step 3.
Draw on a canvas

This step is to learn some new tools that are linked to their previous experience. Also, they can gradually show their creativity in this step. The guidance is suggested as the following.

• Discuss the canvas: Let young children select a canvas, and discuss with them 'Why do you like this one?' 'Who would be in the canvas?' 'What would they do?'

• Drawing with new and old tools: Tap the crayon icon on the top-right, and ask children if they want to use the colour pencil or crayons to draw. During drawing, they can also use the 'eraser,' 'stickers' and 'undo' that they've learned in the last step.

There is no need to rush to the next step. You can discuss more their drawing with them. For example, 'Could you tell me what you drew?' 'This bird looks happy, what made it so happy?' 'Is the bird happy because it found a new house? What an interesting story! Please tell me more about it.'

Through discussion, your children can generate more creative ideas for the next step.

Step 4.
Animate a story

After your children create a few stories, and use all the drawing tools easily, it's time to guide them to make an animation! 🤩 First thing first, they need to learn how to record their voice. Then they can gradually finish a simple animation. The suggested guidance is listed below.

• Record a story: When young children finish their drawing, they can tap the crayon icon on the top right, and the microphone icon on the top to record a story. Tap the square icon when the recording ends. To listen to the recording, tap the triangle item on the top.

• Re-recoding: It might take several times to record a completed story. If your children are not happy with their recording, simply tap the microphone to re-record.

• Record and animate a story: While young children record their voices, they can also highlight part of the drawing by moving their index fingers around the part. Plus, they can also move the stickers while recording.  

Younger children may create short and simple stories. That's still brilliant. Even if there is only a sentence in the story, it's absolutely fine. The point is to let them know the technology, and slowly but surely, they'll create longer story animations with these skills.

Step 5.
Download the animation

Downloading their animations and sharing them with the people they like can create more discussion. More discussion can create more motivation. And more motivation can encourage young children to learn technology and create.

So, let's guide young children to download their animations on their devices then.

This step is straightforward. Tap the 'Create', scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see children's creations. Tap 'Enable Export', and tap the blue download bottom, there you go! Now you can enjoy your animations on your devices.

Although it's a simple animation, it's a child-friendly way to learn the basics of animation. With this experience, they can use more complicated tools to make better animations when they get older. But for now, the App Khan Kids is very suitable for them!   

We hope you enjoy your animation making. 

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