Hands On Animation!!!

Workshop Twelve!

I visited the Somers Clinical Research Facility (CRF) at GOSH again last week. With the help of play specialist Stephanie Lockwood I interviewed some of the young people who were coming in for the day. I met some very imaginative individuals who were bursting with ideas and used their hands to create wonderful artworks and draw sections of the final animation about hand washing.

Maisie had red finger nails........

Emily had purple finger nails and told me how she liked to use her hands to make mud pies in the field at school with her best friend. Emily and her friend sometimes make mud pies in the rain. She has illustrated this for us in this drawing.






















William created these microorganisms. I think the Diplogerminator looks terrifying.

James (age 8) had the wildest imagination of all. He created a whole species of bug that were broadly called the 'Jerry's'. These bugs may look friendly, but watch out! You can't see them, but they can see you. The Jerry's can shoot other bugs with blue lazers that come from their eyes. One hour in our world is like 60 days in Jerry time. 

I couldn't begin to describe the amount of well thought out detail that had gone into creating James' new world of microorganisms, but I hope to use some of our discussion in the animated film.

Workshop Eleven!

Having met many of the older children in the hospital school at GOSH, I thought it would be nice to get some of the younger students involved with the Hands On project. The school is divided into two classes for Primary and Secondary aged pupils. I ran a session with the Primary school class.

I spoke to the group about hand washing. They were very knowledgeable and told me everything they could about microorganisms and washing your hands in hospital.

We made a collaborative stop-frame animation putting all of our hands together and making a sequence of movements.








































The group made lots of drawings that will be used in the production of the final animated film about hand washing. They made self-portraits that will come to life in the animation. These portraits will be characters in the film and will reflect the conversations and discussions we had in the session.

The children told me about some of the things they use their hands for and they made more drawings about these activities.

Workshop Ten!

I met some of the children who come to the Somers Clinical Research Facility (CRF) at GOSH. William and Sam (both age 7) come to the facility regularly and get on very well.

I spent the day with Sam and William. The duo entertained me with their ideas and creative contributions to the Hands On project.

Sam and William initiated a little competition. Head to head colouring! Who would be the first to colour in their giant microorganism posters?

Although sometimes Sam helped William and sometimes William helped Sam. Helping hands..........

 I interviewed the boys and found out what hand washing meant to them. William was described the bug that was living in his throat. He knew how it had got there and knew described how it was crawling around in his throat and couldn't get out, so he tried to cough to let it out. It did come out during the day, and landed on one of Williams drawings.

We had a go at making some stop-frame animations. We thought about the different shapes we make with our hands.

We slowed down the actions and signals that we make with our hands into sequences of much smaller movements. Each time one of the boys moved their hands I took a photograph.

When we played back the photographs in sequence the movements looked very interesting. It helped us to think about how important our hands are in communicating with one another.

 

 

Wellcome Collection

Have a look at an article all about the Hands On project at Great Ormond Street Hospital on the  Wellcome Collection blog.

Dirt: The filthy reality of everyday life; is a wonderful exhibition open to the public at the Wellcome Collection until the 31st August.


Have a look at the Wellcome Collection website for more information.

This watercolour painting shows 'The Great Dust Heap at King's Cross'(by EH Dixon, 1837)

How dirty is your phone?

Have a look at this interesting project that has been part of the Wellcome Collection Dirt Season.


How dirty is your phone? - Wellcome Collection

Workshop Nine!

Today I interviewed lots of young people who were visiting the Homeopathic Outpatients Department at GOSH.

I asked them questions like:

Why do you wash your hands?
How do you wash your hands?
Do you like washing your hands?
When do you wash your hands?
Do you think people have always washed their hands?
Do you think you wash your hands more when you come to the hospital?
How many times in one day do you think you wash your hands?

We had some interesting conversations. My interviewee's thought about the questions very carefully and had brought up some very relevant points.

Alanah (age 12) explained that it is important to wash our hands in order to get rid of harmful germs, but that we shouldn't wash our hands too much as we need to make our immune systems strong and practiced at fighting disease. She also told me that she thought we only started to wash their hands in hospitals when we had discovered microorganisms, which she explained was not that long ago.

Summer (age 12) told me that she thought it was DISGUSTING when some girls at school (not mentioning any names) picked their noses, ate their bogeys and didn't wash their hands....eeeugh!

Summer said that some bacteria live in dairy products like yogurt and cheese and that these
are good for us.

Bisma (age 9) described washing her hands with her brothers when she goes to Mosque.

Anya (age 11) didn't know why, but she thought that germs were probably green.

When she visits the hospital she makes sure she washes her hands a lot, as she doesn't want to get ill or make any other children ill.

Anya's little brother Noah (age 5) loves to wash his hands and uses lots of soap and likes to see the bubbles.

Anya and Noah have a dog called Mopsy. Mopsy is quite naughty and very greedy. He has long hair and easily gets very smelly and dirty. Noah and Anya make sure they wash their hands after they have been playing with Mopsy.

Workshop Eight!

For some of the younger budding scientists at GOSH, using their hands and making them sticky, sparkly and colourful, was a great way to learn about why we wash our hands.

Creative activities in the
Hands On Activity Lab last
week involved many a
messy endeavour. Kitted
out in lab coats and
goggles the children made
microorganism 'glove-bug'
friends and some fantastic
drawings of how our hands
look under a microscope.

Some of the children tested their nerves in 'Don't be Nervous'. Using just their finger tips to identify certain objects. We really thought about how amazing our hands are and how they help us to understand the world around us.

Here is Sam drawing around his hand.

The 'glove-bug' activity went down very well with our young friends at GOSH. The children had a look at some images of real viruses, fungi and bacteria and then created their own giant microorganism puppets. using plain white gloves and socks, they stuck, drew and imagined new life forms as if they had been enlarged a thousand times to become the size of their hand. Some very funny creatures evolved over the course of two days in the lab.

Dr Samuel.....microbiology expert, with his new microorganism friends!

Have a look at this character. It looks like a slithering, slimy bacteria that might live in water. 

Lizzie and Claire who were helping us with the activity lab noticed something quite funny about this long-tongued creature. If you turn it on it's side.......it is a very wonderful chicken!

 

Workshop Seven!

Welcome to the Hands On Activity Lab!! Where everyone can be a scientist for the day.

The lab was open on Thursday and Friday last week with lots of experimental activities exploring, in disgusting detail, the science behind hand washing. The activities helped the children at GOSH to understand how  microbiologists study the invisible 'germs' or 'microorganisms' on our hands.

How can we see them if they are invisible?




Before entering the lab the children were asked 'What do you use your hands for?' and 'Why do you wash your hands?'. There were lots of very thoughtful responses.

We use our hands for: 'Greeting people, waving hello and goodbye' 'Touching, feeling and investigating' 'Picking things up' 'Eating' 'Playing' 'Writing' 'Drawing' 'To ring the bell' 'Clapping (having fun)' 'Drinking' 'Brushing teeth' 'Painting' 'Turn on taps' 'Holding things and feeling things' 'make stuff' 'Scratching your nose' 'Sticking' 'Eating sweets' 'Washing stuff up' 'Colouring' and of course....'Holding slugs'!!

We wash our hands to: 'Get rid of the dirt' 'To keep them clean so that we don't get infections' 'So we don't get germs on them' 'So bacteria does not spread' 'Stay clean and fight germs' 'To keep clean and to stop germs from going into your body' 'To keep you healthy' 'In case you get ill' 'We have to wash our hands so we do not get them dirty' 'We wash our hands because there are always germs on our hands and if we don't wash them more and more germs get on to your hands'

We were extremely lucky to have a professional microscopist (try saying this word out loud!) with us in the Hands On Activity Lab. Dennis Fulwood is a member of The Quekett Microscopical Club, he is passionate about microscopy and loves nothing more than meeting young enthusiasts.

Dennis brought in his microscope and lots of intriguing slides of spiders, fossils and even a piece of meteorite. The children were queuing up to have a look at their hands under a microscope and see if they could see anything lurking about there in the unknown. It was fascinating to be able to see such tiny things on an enormous scale!

So we can look at very very tiny things under a microscope to see them in more detail, but we can't quite see any microorganisms under the microscope....they are still too tiny. Before microbiologists examine different types of microorganisms, they have to let them grow, multiply and develop into colonies (groups of microbes). When lots of tiny microorganisms are grouped together they are much easier to see and identify. In these dishes you can see different types of microorganisms that have been grown in the lab.

We wanted to see what it was like collecting and cultivating microorganisms, so we had a go. We collected a sample of microorganisms from somewhere on our person. We used a 'swab', which is like a giant cotton bud, to take our sample. 

Some people put the swab up their nose, in their ear, in their arm pits and even in their mouth. Our microorganisms were too small to be seen on our swab, we had to use a special technique in our lab to make our microorganisms or 'germs' bigger and visible.

Microbiologists use a special jelly-like substance called 'agar' to help the microorganisms they collect grow. There are different types of agar which provide environments for the various types of microorganisms to develop. They come in lots of pretty colours, you can even get chocolate agar! When the samples microbiologists take are spread onto the agar, the agar plates are then left in a warm environment (about the same temperature as our body) for a couple of days in order to grow.

Here is some agar before and after this process:

We had a go at spreading out our sample on to agar plates that were kindly donated to us by Cherwell Laboratories who supply labs all over the country. 

Microbiologists spread their samples onto their plates in a very specific way. Because the sample we have taken contains so many different types of microorganisms, hundreds and hundreds in fact, it is important to separate these into their individual groups, otherwise it is hard to tell one microorganism from another. It looks like this: 

Because most of the young people couldn't come back to see how their agar plates had developed in a warm place for a couple of days, we used a very 'special scientific solution' to speed up the process and help us to visualise how our microorganisms would look like if we grew them.

This is what the agar plates looked like after a few days.

Have a look at 'Workshop Eight!' for more of the things that we got up to last week...............