The Life Cycle of a Plant Claymation Videos-- Part 1 Ms. Purvee's Class

These claymation stop motion videos were prepared by first grade students in Ms. Purvee's class to share their understanding of the life cycle of plants.  As a collaborative group, students designed and created backgrounds and then decided what type of plant to grow.  Next students used iPads to photograph the step by step life cycle of their plant using clay.  Once each step was photographed, students  imported the pictures into iMovie and created a short film.  Next they added their voices to describe the plant life cycle!

In first grade, one essential question we would like every student to answer is:
How Does an Organism Change Throughout Its Life Cycle? 

The videos support the concrete learning about this idea through a variety of modes from kinesthetic learning (the molding of the clay), verbal learning (describing and recording the steps the plant goes through), collaborative learning (each student worked in a group and all decisions and work was agreed upon by their teams) , creativity and choice (students selected the plant they would study, and how they would represent their plant for the video) and technology (iPads application iMovie).

Students were able to complete these tasks with very little adult support and I think the results are very impressive for a group of first graders just learning to use these new technology tools!  Please leave a comment to tell us what you think! Have they successfully reported on how their plant organism changes? I think so!

The Story of the Rose




The Sunflower


The Peach Tree



The Story of A Tomato Plant