Today myself and all four children plus a friend of the Thinker’s, caught the train into the city to Federation Square.

Our first activity was to see the free kids flicks. They were screening a collection of animated stories about monsters from as far away as Japan and France, at ACMI. This started at 11.00am and went for approximately an hour.

The animation activity that we had also planned to do, started at 12.00pm immediately after the flicks. There tends to be a rush at the opening time and lots of queuing involved for these fantastic free activities, so I opted to find some seats for the children so we could eat the lunch that I had packed for us before we moved on.

The queue was still quite long, so I then let the children explore the Memory Grid for some time. The older children settled comfortably playing some computer games, while the smaller children and myself relaxed in some bean bags, while we watched animations made by school children.

At around 1.00pm we made our way to the free animation activity, where we only had a short wait before being allocated a table to begin colouring in our monsters.

The children then had to cut out and assemble their monsters, which was a task completed with great team work by the children. Some monsters involved more detail in the cutting process, so when one child finished they would help out the other who was not yet finished. (I did the cutting for the two younger children. There was only large scissors left to make small cuts!)

When this was completed, split into two groups the children had the opportunity to place their monsters on a back drop and then start the very slow task of small movement - photos taken, small movement - photos taken etc.

Possum had created the story line for her and Babaganouski’s animation and she also made the movements very gently, something that the little one could not quite do.

Setting up for and taking the shots took Possum about 10 minutes and it goes for only approximately 3 seconds. The second group (Thinker, his friend and Little Rascal) took about 15 minutes as they had a more detailed story line and their animation goes for about 7 seconds. (They looped it for the kids, so the could just watch it over and over.)

Then with click of a few buttons, the children were able to see their animation on the big screen. The videos below were taken by me videoing the laptop, so although not perfect, you can get to see the wonderful animations the children created.

This monster mania animation activity runs until this Friday, 11th July from 12pm. If you are in the wonderful city of Melbourne I can highly recommend it. It has been the highlight of the school holidays for my children so far.

Technorati Tags: ACMI, animation, Children's Activities, School holidays

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