Have you ever heard the phrases ‘watching the grass grow’ or ‘watching paint dry’? Both of these sayings describe things that take a very long time to happen. Unless you are blessed with the patience of a saint (or stop motion animator) you might find processes that happen slowly incredibly boring. 

We all know that time flies when you’re having fun, so, if there was a way to speed up time, could that turn boring, slow things into exciting, fast things?

Well, we have some fantastic news for impatient people everywhere: you can turn boring into brilliant with the magic of time-lapse photography! 

Time-lapse photography is a filmmaking technique where images are captured at set intervals of time. When these images are played back quickly as a movie, we can see things moving much faster than they do in real life. It’s a fun, easy activity that captures the imaginations of young scientists and filmmakers while boosting STEM and STEAM learning in the classroom. 

If you have not tried this movie-making technique before, check out our tutorials for making time-lapse videos with the HUE Animation and Stop Motion Studio software. If you need extra help, don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.

If you’ve read this far but wished you could have sped up the intro to this blog with time-lapse – stay with us – we are now at the ‘ideas’ section of the article!

Time-lapse ideas for kids

1. Walking Water

Watch capillary action in action with this captivating ‘walking water’ experiment. The FUN LEARNING for kids blog has a fantastic guide for trying out this cute kiddie science project in the classroom if you are not familiar with the activity.

For the time-lapse software settings, we recommend capturing one photo every two or three seconds for a duration of around 35 mins, or until the liquid in each cup has completely leveled out. 

For more capillary action, time-lapse fun, head over to Instagram to watch HUE Community member STEM with Stephanie demonstrate the phenomenon with flowers in colored water.

2. Pea-lapse 

No, this isn’t an embarrassing incident brought on by laughing too hard! A ‘pea-lapse’ is a fun afternoon time-lapse project for green-fingered filmmakers. 

We set our software to capture one image every minute over the course of a few hours to show how pea plants move towards sunlight (phototropism) and dance in slow motion throughout the day. Some other fun plants to capture in all their groovy glory include sunflowers, prayer plants, and mustard, cress or chia seeds.

3. Metamorphosis

Add an extra dimension to life cycle school projects by capturing every moment with time-lapse photography. The capture interval and duration for metamorphosis videos will depend on what animal and life cycle stage you are filming. 

If you want to capture lots of detail of a fast moving process, choose a short capture interval of a second or two. If you want to capture the whole life cycle of, say, tadpoles transforming into frogs, choose a much slower duration of one image every five or ten minutes.

4. Chicks hatching

Images courtesy of La Classe de Défine and Ms. PAIS Maria.

On average, it takes 21 days for chicken eggs to hatch from the day they are laid, but the incubation period could be shorter or longer depending on factors such as temperature, humidity and the breed of chicken. 

When chicks begin to hatch, it can take anywhere from a few hours to a whole day for them to escape the egg. Watching an egg doing nothing for 24 hours wouldn’t be a particularly eggciting proposition, eggspecially without being able to pinpoint the exact moment your feathered friends will emerge.

With time-lapse photography you can make sure you don’t miss the moment. Simply set your software to capture one photo every minute while your chick is hatching to create a cracking video to share with your students.  

5. Dough-lapse

Investigate the chemistry of bread-making with farting yeast and time-lapse photography. Yeast transforms the sugar in the dough into carbonic gas (carbon dioxide) and alcohol (ethanol). The trapped carbon dioxide makes the dough rise, and the alcohol produced by fermentation evaporates during the baking process.

6. Bread mold experiment

Have your students touch slices of bread with washed and unwashed hands, put the slices into labeled, resealable bags and set your camera and software to capture all the action. As this project takes around a week or two to complete, we recommend that you capture one image every 10 minutes.

Head over to Mombright.com to read their brilliant Moldy Bread Experiment blog post, which offers step-by-step instructions and tips for your next moldy science fair project.

7. Sundial time-lapse

This sundial project has so much to teach budding scientists. With this single activity, budding Bill Nyes will learn about the rotation of Earth, the poles (north, east, south and west) and telling the time. Capture one image every 10 seconds over the course of 5-6 hours for best results. 

8. Light-speed LEGO® builds

Time-lapse LEGO® builds are a fun way to celebrate the holiday season. In fact, there is even an official LEGO® Build Day on December 27th each year! With time-lapse photography you can capture all the brick-clicking action and watch your creations build themselves in super-speed! What’s more, you can then send your video masterpieces to absent friends or family members, or share them online with #LEGOBuildDay.

9. Painting, drawing or coloring

With time-lapse photography even watching paint dry can be entertaining. Set your software to capture one photo every second until you have finished your work of art. For a fun twist on this idea, reverse the sequence of images you captured to create an un-drawing, un-painting or un-coloring video. 

10. Mushroom growing

If you’ve got room for one more time-lapse idea, make room for mushrooms! These fast-growing fungi can double in size every 24 hours which makes them an excellent time-lapse subject for kids who might want to see results quickly. 

In our pink oyster mushroom time-lapse project, we captured one image every 3 minutes for a duration of 6-8 hours every night, over the course of a week. Between filming sessions we changed the angle of the camera to focus on another area of interest, to keep things… interesting. 

As always, we love seeing your creations so if you make any time-lapse videos, don’t forget to share and tag @HUEcameras on Instagram, Facebook and X(Twitter). Alternatively, get in touch and send us your videos. We cannot wait to see your time-lapse movie masterpieces!

Find out more, subscribe to our blog, download resources, contact us or follow us on social media.