Description

These 5th Graders studied Keith Haring and the significance of his life and art on our world. After exploring elements of line and color through drawing; they then created their own morphes in the computer lab using VSE’s Animation Maker.

Objective

The students will learn about Keith Haring's work and the impact it had on our world, the way we communicate, the way we look at and understand art, and the way it has shaped future perceptions.

The students will be able to create an animation with at least twenty frames dealing with Keith Harings art work.

The students will be able to talk about/draw about Keith Haring and the way he used elements of line and color.

Resources

Keith Haring's Flip Book morphs

Materials

Computers
VSE Animation Maker

Procedure

CLASS 1
Students spent the first class learning how to use VSE’s Animation Maker (using Kid Pix Studio), they worked with the different tools and learned how to create frames.

CLASS 2
In art class and in the computer lab the students studied different aspects of Keith Harings art and life on www.haringkids.com.

CLASS 3-4
The students spent two to three 50 minute sessions in the computer lab to create their morphs while spending 2-3 50 minute classes in art learning to draw Keith Haring-inspired imagery.

Questions

The students shared their final projects with the class and explained what they had done to create their morph.

How did Keith help us to see life in a different way?

What did Keith think about fine art and technology?

Extensions

Create a Keith Haring inspired mural in your school setting using all of the sketches the students created.

A note from our Web Designer
There are many image programs that can create animations. Photoshop and Fireworks are two of the standards. Possibly too complex for small children. Microworlds is a very good program (which includes a great programming language especially written for children to learn programming) for children and includes the capacity for creating animations. There are some inexpensive programs for children that create animations such as Goo. And last but not least there are several programs, many of them shareware or freeware, for creating gif animations. Do a search for "gif animations" on Google or go to Download.com and you will find a program suitable for your students.

"Image Into Motion" lesson from Scholastic

Calvert Elementary School