Tag Archives: Christmas

Enjoying the Holiday Spirit

The last week before holidays includes a bit of fun and creativity. Here we are after our concert, looking festive following our rendition of Jingle Bell Rock.

Jingle Bell Rockers

Some things we do at this time of year are secret, and some things we share right away.

We were inspired by the Grade 3 students of Our Forest to make door swags as gifts for our families. We had our pruners ready to hit the woods to collect some cedar boughs (this is permitted on Crown Land that is not park land), but the day turned out to be a very rainy, stormy one. It looked like we would be drenched.

Luckily for us, another class was making centrepieces and we got some of their remaining cedar, fir, and holly. Thank you, Mrs. Harris!  Take a look at the fun we had.

Christmas Dance Off

Woohoo! Can it be we are ready to share our dances with Mrs. Braidwood’s class? Well, some of us are, and more are on the way. Our finished Pivot stick figure dance animations are beginning to roll in. Find Mrs. Braidwood’s friendly challenge here. She also shared with us a great site for finding Creative Commons  music.

We were plagued by technical difficulties and slooooooow performance in Windows Movie Maker, but we persevered. We hope to have more videos posted on student blogs soon.

We developed criteria together to help us be successful in creating our animations:

  • Use a Creative C0mmons Christmas image, and give credit
  • Design realistic movements, not jerky or impossible movements
  • Include creative moves and transitions
  • Animation should fit with the background, and make use of it
  • Visibilty of dancer (if the background is dark make dancer light)
  • Pivot is dancing, not just moving
  • Music is Creative Commons, and give credit

Tyler, who happened to be the first done, was the great trouble-shooter and technical support guy to the whole class. Here’s his creation:

Christmas Pivot by Tyler from Jan Smith on Vimeo.

So You Think You Can Dance?

Break Dance, that is!

We are taking part in a friendly Christmas challenge with Mr. Kirkpatrick in the UK. His students have been playing with Pivot stick figure animation, and so has Huzzah. We used Creative Commons images and music–and a bit of creativity–and voila! Christmas cheer on the dance floor! So this is a friendly exploration of creativity–not a competition like “So You Think You Can Dance”!
Below are two videos, both by Sam. One was posted to YouTube, the other to Vimeo. Can you notice a difference in quality?  Students have started to embed the videos on their blogs. Take a look at Sophie, Nicholas, Blake, Micheal G., Chelsea, Haley, Kris, Daniel C. and Max, who got their videos embedded today. The rest of the class will be loading the rest of the videos onto their blogs over the next few days.


Break Dancing Pivot from Jan Smith on Vimeo.