My early childhood students love video, and video modeling is an evidence-based strategy for teaching children with disabilities.  I’ve wanted to create our own library of videos with familiar voices that teach vocabulary and story. I also typically have a group of older students who act as peer mentors for my early childhood. I would love to support their continued leadership by involving them in these creations.  Before venturing further in my plans, I wanted to explore it myself. Would it be an accessible format for these students? Would it be engaging for the preschoolers? I needed to experiment in order to know how to best lead students in this project.

I quickly found out that stop motion is not as easy as it looks! It takes careful planning, patience, and a sense of humor for when you make mistakes. And a lot of pictures. I’ve recorded some suggestions that I learned from my first experience making a stop motion video, as well as my 10 second clip featuring “Baby Shark”, a preschool favorite.

My take-away? Yes, elementary students absolutely can make their own stop motion videos! It may be best done in partners and groups to shave off some of the time with move-picture-move-picture. I also recommend that they have access to tripods. Kapwing (www.kapwing.com) may be a challenging tool for younger students to master, but Google Slides, iMovie, or other tools are more easily used to link pictures. Have you tried stop motion video? What did you learn?

Featured image credits: fudowakira0. (2015, May 14). Playmobil-photography-photographers-765111 [Photograph]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/playmobil-photography-photographers-765111/