For the past few weeks, Katie Argyle of Midnight Music has been running a fantastic course about using Canva in the classroom titled, “Create Beautiful Teaching Resources with Canva”. If you took the course a couple of summers ago, she has updated it with many of the new tools. I would encourage you to check it out today since K-12 educators have access to the free Canva for Education program, which is like the professional version.

Create an Animation Canva Tool

I created a boomwhacker play-along to the simple song, Snail, Snail. You can find a copy of the song here. It can also serve as a singing assessment where the students watch the video and then sing when I drop out. My goal for this video is two-fold:

1. To have the students perform the boomwhacker play-along accurately.

2. To have the students sing and perform the song accurately.

For Katie’s course assignment, I decided to use Canva to create this video instead of the video editing programs I usually use. The process was as follows:

1. I placed the lyrics onto the screen using the text tool.

2. I add a background using the Photos tool and made it lighter using the transparency tool.

3. I added the snail using the Elements tool.

4. I then used the Create an Animation tool to record me moving the snail as a “follow the bouncy ball” video. I could have smoothed it or made it follow with the “steady” tool, but it would not have matched up to the rhythm of the lyrics.

5. I liked the results and wanted to record myself singing with the animations. I could not get Canva to do that accurately so I screen-recorded it using Loom and exported the audio from that video. I then added it to the Canva video.

6. I then exported the video.

7. I liked the results and made it into a Seesaw Assessment Activity.

Rubric

The students can now learn the song and then record themselves singing it into the Seesaw app. We can also play it up on the screen and the students can sing and play along with their assigned boomwhacker.

This song is very simple with three pitches, so I would use this with kindergarten and first grade. I would also use it with second grade as a review at the beginning of the school year. Finally, we would perform the movement game to help with the repetition of learning the song and to have the students move to the music.

4 - Sings the pitches sol, mi, and la accurately without any assistance from the teacher.

3 - Sings the pitches sol, mi, and la accurately with some assistance from the teacher.

2 - Can only sing the pitches sol, mi, and la with assistance from the teachers.

1 - Speaks the song.

Stay tuned for more resources and tech tips as we approach the start of a new school year or the return from a holiday break.