Before we get into today's book excerpt, check out our latest Halloween playlist. 7 totally original animated shorts by Animating Kids students. Happy Halloween. > “WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF CLAY!” “WHAT?” “We've got maybe an hour left!” I looked at my watch. Two hours until closing. “That's impossible! We brought TEN TUBS!” “Look around!” At least one hundred kids were lined up down Verick St. Every animation table was packed. Parents were elbow-deep in clay. And the line kept growing. We had...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Sorry Coach It's college football season in America, and I recently got a kick out of a pre-game interview with a coach. I didn't catch which school he represented, but a reporter asked him an offhanded question as he was about to go into the locker room. "Hey Coach, what's your least favorite word?" The coach didn't hesitate. "Narrative!" And with that, he walked off, leaving the reporter sputtering. I nearly did a spit take. Having spent much of my life working with narrative, I thought his...
13 days ago • 5 min read
While we have not expressly published Halloween films this week, they are scary good, especially for having been done in a school classroom by teams of 10yr olds. Here is the seven minute playlist this week. Bon Animate! PS If you are getting Animating Kids for 2026-27, email us at info@animatingkids.com and we'll help you with your order.
19 days ago • 1 min read
We want kids to become more than consumers of media. Making original stories with sound and motion transports them. Their ideas. Their hands. Their stories. That’s the point. Not AI. Them. Here are 7 more handmade films created by kids ages 8, 9, 10 and 11. In teams. Inventing, cutting, engineering, doing the math, using their own characters, their own ideas and their own imagined worlds. See what happens when kids stop consuming and start creating → Bon Animate! The Team at Animating Kids
27 days ago • 1 min read
For years, hundreds of Animating Kids movies were stuck in a copyright vault because of the music. Working with a lot of non-profit organizations meant they didn't worry much about copyrights. So we started unlocking them. One film at a time. Strip the music. Clean them up. Get them cleared. This summer, we finally finished. YouTube vetted them all with no copyright strikes. Now we have enough films ready to release one every day for the next 3–4 years. And these are just the films we helped...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
In 2005, the Smartest People in Media Tried to Predict the Future About twenty years ago, a remarkable collection of educators, researchers, filmmakers, artists, technologists and policymakers gathered in San Jose to wrestle with a very large question: What would it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Adobe was involved. The George Lucas Educational Foundation was involved. The New Media Consortium was involved. There were people from universities, schools, media organizations, the arts...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
We will return to regularly scheduled book excerpts, industry think pieces, and offers next week. The links below will always be in the footer moving forward. They will export you into a wonderful world of stories in sound and motion, the Animating Kids way. Every week, an new batch of seven one-minute films in a Youtube playlist. Four ways to jump in: Week 3 DigestWatch last week’s batch in one playlist. The Living ArchiveBrowse the full YouTube playlist from the beginning as it grows. 21...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Fifteen years ago, we asked a simple question: Can kindergarteners and first graders make movies with our process? We'd taught thousands in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. But a 5 or 6 year old? So we borrowed an art room, rounded up some kids, handed them paper, scissors and cameras, ran them through our tutorials and tested it. We thought this behind-the-scenes rough cut of the process was gone forever. It's hard drive crashed and it's DVD was filed mislabeled. We just found it. These kids...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
These kids’ films have been hiding for years. Not anymore. We’re finally opening The Living Archive — hundreds of rough, hilarious, unmistakably human-made films we’ve helped kids make over the years. They taught us what has become Animating Kids: the techniques kids tried most, the challenges they loved, and one big lesson - great teams made great films. Soon we’ll have nearly four years of daily uploads scheduled. So check back often. We’re just getting started. We'll attach the previous...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
We are publishing a new kids animation everyday. Each week we'll send you our newsletter with the previous week's posts. Here is the first week's worth in our Living Archive playlist: It's on Youtube, Youtube always wants you to log in. Just click past that screen anytime it shows up, the videos are in the sidebar. This week's installments run just over seven minutes, all in. Get ready for real, handmade media by kids, for kids will all the nicks and dings real kids bring. Next batch Tuesday....
about 2 months ago • 1 min read