5- Animation - abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache

This website www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache was fantastic. It allows children to create storyboards and their own ads or movies. This website showed the storyboard of my daughter's favourite ad on ABC kids - the Roller Mache ad where the rabbit eats a carrot and then pulls it out of its mouth and the carrot is now a group of 5 people attached. I remember making these at Primary School, where you fold a piece of paper (like a concertina fold) then draw a person and cut it out making sure some of the drawing is attached to the fold such as the arms and legs. Once you cut it out it ends up being four people holding hands instead of just one person.

There are many many wonderful sites on abc.net.au for children and this one in particular is fantastic in inspiring and assisting children to create an animation. This site offers children inspiration by featuring interviews and sketches from many Australian animators and their creations. For example Darcy Prendergest who created the animation with the rabbit as mentioned earlier, he created it in his own bedroom with plasticine, a light and his own video camera on a tripod.! It also features a sketch of a cartoon "Pet" from Rick Carton a self taught illustrator and creator of the book series Edgar & Ellen and in a short video he shows children how easy it is to draw "Pet" from the series.

The site features pages on - Inspiration, Planning an animation (storyboards, drawings etc), Creating an animation, A Gallery of animations and even an option for students to upload their works. It also has a competitions page for students to enter their work etc. It is very easy to navigate and 'shild friendly' with sounds and images that move. I would use this site in my classroom to encourage creative thinking and even for art classes when children are using platicine. You could teach children how to make their creation look like it is moving and create a class short film. What Fun!!! Being a music teacher, you could also add suitable music to the class film in music class. Animation could be integrated into many studies.