What to do with this activity?

You may be familiar with time-lapse videos - for instance where plants appear to grow over a few seconds (like this wheat grass) when they really took days or weeks to grow. But how is time-lapse done?

In time-lapse photography a still picture or short video is taken at regular intervals and then played back at normal film/video speed. Videos are actually 25 images played per second - the movement is an illusion. The interval of time between the photos/videos taken can vary. For instance, each still photo for this video of moving clouds at the beach was taken only a few seconds apart. But a clever Dad managed to squash 14 years of growing into just 4 minutes by taking a short video portrait of his daughter Lotte every few weeks or months. 

Encourage your child to experiment with simple time lapse photography. Some cameras have time lapse settings. Or you can download a time-lapse app on your smart phone. If you don't have a camera or phone with a time-lapse setting, just pick a view to photograph all year round, perhaps with trees that lose their leaves. Then look at the photos one after the other.

For a time-lapse video that squeezes the seasonal changes of one year into 40 seconds check out our website link here.