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After swimming in a pool of her own tears, Alice and her new animal friends run a Caucus Race to get dry. During this race, Alice had the chance to see many different birds and other creatures closely as they ran around. In this activity, children will create a zoetrope, a type of movie picture wheel, which shows different creatures walking around. As they draw individual frames of animals, children will gain an understanding of how different animals move.
Did You Know?
- Gait is a word used to describe the way a person or an animal walks, steps, or runs.
- The word zoetrope comes from the Greek word zoe, meaning "living things," and "trope," meaning "spinning;" together they mean "a wheel of life."
- The zoetrope works through a phenomenon called persistence of vision, where the brain holds an image of something moving very quickly for a split second longer than it is really there. When a series of images are shown to you in rapid succession (like a flip book), this phenomenon allows your brain to be tricked into seeing fluid motions rather than one image followed by another.
Materials: What You'll Need for Each Student
- copies of the zoetrope pattern
- scissors
- markers or colored pencils
- flexible straws
- tape
- pencil or hole punch
- books of different animals
To Get Ready:
- Copy enough patterns for each student in your class.
Activity: Now, Try It!
- Cut out the zoetrope.
- Think about which animal you would like to draw and then imagine how that animal moves. What is the shape of the animal's legs or fins? How many legs or fins does the animal have ... two or four? Do all the legs move at the same time? If the animal has two legs, how do its arms move? Do the legs move together at the same time or do they move opposite each other? How about the back legs ... how do they move in comparison with the front legs? How does the animal's back move as it walks, runs, or swims?
- Make a sequence of pictures on the zoetrope cutout that shows an animal moving. Draw a different picture on each of the tabs. The bottom of your picture should be where the tab is connected to the center.
- After you've finished your drawing, use a hole punch or sharpened pencil to make a hole in the center of the zoetrope.
- Fold each of the tabs inward toward the center so that the pictures are inside of the circle.
- To help the tabs stay up, use a small piece of tape to attach each of the tabs to one another at the top. Be sure to leave a gap between the tabs so that you can see through.
- Insert the flexible straw into the hole at the center of the zoetrope. The longer section of the straw should be sticking out from the bottom.
- Hold your zoetrope up to your eyes so that you can see through the gaps. Roll the straw between your palms, letting the zoetrope spin.
- What happens to your drawings as you spin the zoetrope? What happens if you spin it in the other direction?
Questions to Think about and Ask:
- Which way do your knees bend? Which way does a horse's knee bend? How does that affect the way you or a horse walks?
- Do you want to make any changes to your drawings now that you see how it looks as a movie?
- If you were to make another zoetrope, how might you make your drawings different?
- How do you think the zoetrope makes the pictures move like a movie?
Career Connections:
A psychobiologist studies the behaviors of animals, including the way they walk. Wouldn't you like to know where an animal has been, what it was doing, and why?
Assess What Happened: (Students reflect)
If the different animals that your class drew had a race, which animal do you think would win and why? Encourage students explain why the animal they drew might move the way it does. Students might think about the number of legs it walks on, and how its back and arms move.
Connect It to the Story!
After swimming in the Pool of Tears, Alice and her new animal friends, "the birds with draggled feathers, the animals with their fur clinging close to them, and all dripping, wet, cross and uncomfortable" had to figure out a way to dry themselves. After much discussion and some experimentation, they final settle on holding a Caucus Race to dry off. Basically, a Caucus Race in this story, is when all the animals run around in a circular racecourse until the end of the race is called at random - at which point, they hope they are all dry. Which animal will race the fastest in your animation?
Connect It to Standards
Students "develop an understanding of the characteristics of organisms." One such characteristic is "each plant or animal has different structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction." (NSES Standard)
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