Finishing touches to our animations

Class four have been busy putting the finishing touches to our animation scenes and characters. We are now ready to start taking photos.

Lunar theme park challenge

Class four have been set a maths challenge this week. "The year 2050.  Man is now colonising on the moon and you have decided to open the first lunar theme park in history."

They need to think carefully about the rides they are going to include, what other facilities visitors will need and how will visitors get between the facilities and rides. 

They have been given a budget and a price list for each item.  The challenge had now begun... Watch this space to find out how they get on!

Setting the scene and making characters

Class four have been busy constructing scenes and characters for our own animations. We have had to think carefully about the background scenery and which characters we want to be able to move in our scenes.

Fairtrade fortnight

As part of fairtrade fortnight class four investigated how cocoa beans are made into chocolate. We researched how much money cocoa farmers received in relation to commercial chocolate companies and we were surprised by our findings. We then decided to write newspaper reports related to the headline...Chocolate is running out!! 

We researched the fact that creme eggs have been made much smaller this year due to a lack of chocolate and dairy milk. We then decided we better taste them to compare their taste with Fairtrade chocolates. 

We decided they both tasted lovely!! 

Chinese New Year Dragon Shapes!

As part of our maths we have been learning about 2D and 3D shape.  We were set a challenge to make a 3D model of a Chinese dragon to celebrate Chinese New Year.

We worked in groups to draw nets of shapes we wanted to use. 

Then we gathered ideas for the decoration of the dragon. 

We then had to figure out how to connect all our shapes together.  We named the shapes on the dragon. We are trying to get these dragons complete so watch this space for completed dragons! 

Flushed Away animations

Class four watched the DVD Flushed Away last week. We thought carefully about how the characters had been made in preparation for making our own animations. We then gathered all the equipment we would need to make our own flushed away slug! 

One of the special features of the DVD was a step by step guide from one of the animators from the movie.  He showed us how to roll out the plastecine in certain shapes and how to use various tools to get different textures on the plastecine.  

We were surprised that it wasn't actually as easy as it looked!! 

He also showed us how to use cocktail sticks in a very clever way to construct part of the model slug. 

I think you'll agree we did a pretty good job!! 

We are now going to get in groups and plan our own animations around our space topic.  Watch this space...for some slug aliens!! 

Beginning our Space and Animations topic

Class four begun their Space and Animations topic by researching the different planets of the solar system.  We designed posters about each different planet which we have now displayed in our classroom with our inflatable planets!

We thought about the order of the planets and came up with a mnemonic to remember the order. 

We then found out some information on the sun which we made into leaflets.

We have also been learning about stars and constellations. We looked at different constlations and the stories behind them.  We then used black paper and compasses to make holes for light to shine through. We plan to make a display of constellations on our classroom window.