Lynda, from Troon, Scotland, created a stop motion animation with her son, Will.. Let’s take a look at it…
What did you do?
My son loves Playmobil, and spends a lot of time creating scenes with it. So, I decided to look into stop motion movie apps. I downloaded “Stop Motion” (free version) to my iPhone and after playing about in it for a few minutes figured out the basics and off we went!! He set up his figures and very patiently moved them between shots to play out what was in his mind. It took about an hour to create the 30 second video, and one take to narrate it!
We learned that it’s best to have my iPhone on charge while using the app ad to use the automatic timer to take the photos. You can change the timer from one second upwards. Depending what you are doing, you might only need a few seconds, for example when the fire engine is doing into the scene, or perhaps ten seconds to move more than one figure between shots.
Do you have any other projects planned?
Will is looking forward to making more of these, he loves space themed things, so I suspect this will be next!
Tell the Housebound With Kids community a bit about yourself…
My name is Lynda, and am a stay at home mum to Will (7) and Alex (3). We live in Troon, Scotland and are very fortunate to have the beach on our doorstep.
How are you finding being housebound so far?
Lockdown was a challenge initially, adjusting to a new normal, with four of us being home all day everyday together (Husband is currently on furlough). However, I try and plan to do one fun activity a day, and to be honest this is as much for me as it is the boys!! We have done some really fun things together, making a solar oven from a shoe box, building a simple teepee with garden canes, an old bed sheet and a few clothes pegs, making ice cream in a zip lock bag, making a family silhouette picture from wax crayons, along with some other fun experiments.
Do you have any tips for other parents?
For me, I need to have something to focus for the day. Could be something as simple as baking cookies together or watching a movie together. I have found that the boys enjoy playing over structured school work, so I try to sneak things in! For example, I set up a tuck shop with four baskets, each labeled with a price. They boys were given £1 each a day to spend on whatever snacks they wanted, but they had to buy them. So for example, fruit was 10p but a packet of crisps was 50p. When they wanted anything, Will had to figure out the change for him and help his brother too. So that really helped with learning about coins and counting too! Also helped reduce how many times a day I heard “Can I have a snack?” or “I’m hungry!”
Has being part of our community helped you?
It is great to see other peoples ideas and also makes you feel like you’re not alone, especially on a rough day – and we all have those!!
