Sunday, August 17, 2014

Tap the Magic Tree on the Screen

Book:  Tap the Magic Tree  by Christie Matheson
Puppets:   None
Props:   None
Technology:  Scanned Images and Projector
Presenters:   One or two
Audience:  Family Storytime  (mostly 3-7 year olds)

Making books interactive by directly involving readers in the action can be pretty cool:  There Are Cats in This Book and Press Here are two of the best examples from recent years.  Tap the Magic Tree takes that interactivity used so effectively in Press Here and fits it into a pleasing book about a year in the life of a tree.  For Family Storytime, we scanned the images, adjusted the placement of the words a bit, and used the PowerPoint click to work as a "page turn."

 The book opens with a bare-limbed tree.


 Readers are told to do different things (like "tap it once"), and when the page turns, we see the effect.  Since we don't want 80 kids rushing up and touching the projection screen, we ask them to tap in the air.  When they do, we click on the PowerPoint remote to bring up the next image, which shows that a green leaf has been added:


In putting the PowerPoint together, we scanned the images and lined them up so that the tree was placed in the same spot for each image.  That way, it would look like the same tree, just with the added item (like the leaf above).  For the first scan (above), we covered up the text.  Then another click makes the text appear:


In the book, the words are sometimes on a facing blank page, so we re-typed all of the words to make them appear alongside the image of the tree.  By doing the text as a second step, instead of simultaneous to the illustration, we could guide the audience's attention properly.  First they see the visual change on the screen.  Then the text appears with the instructions that will lead to the next change.

As the year progresses, the tree changes, and so do the things we ask the kids to do to make it change:


When the tree is full of autumn leaves (above), we all "blow!" and the leaves fall off as we click:


Then we get the whole audience clapping to bring....:


The only other adjustment we made from the book was to put a colored frame around each image.  Borderless works just fine in the book, but we needed frames to make the pictures distinct against our big white screen.  I thought it would be cool to match the color of the frames to a dominant color from the illustration on that page, but I think next time we'll use just one color for the frame so that the change in the illustrations is the only change the audience sees.

It's a nice simple book to scan and tell, but with a very effective impact.  Our scanned PowerPoint presentation is really not different at all from the way we would read it to a smaller group.  I used the book version with my Toddler Time group and it was equally effective, but the scanning allows us to share it with much larger groups.  


2 comments:

  1. I am finding it impossible to line up the tree perfectly as each scan seems slightly off from the other. Is there a trick to scanning / lining up images?
    Appreciate all you do in sharing your ideas. Can't tell you how much I enjoy this blog!

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  2. Well, it's never perfect. When you grab one image on PowerPoint and move it over the other image, it's kind of see-through. So I messed around with that, trying to get at least the trunk pretty close. And make the second image a bit bigger or smaller if needed. Older versions of PowerPoint might not have that see-through feature (I have 2007)...

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