​Playful Characters: A Creative Workshop for Kids (Ages 6 to 8)

​Join us for a hands-on, high-energy creative workshop where children explore different ways to design and animate original characters!

​In a world where digital tools make creating easy, this workshop places a special focus on the unique power, texture, and joy of handmade art, while seamlessly blending it with cutting-edge tech. Over 90 minutes, your child will journey through three distinct zones of imagination:

​Handmade Play

​Before touching a screen, we dive into the physical world to build a foundation for storytelling. Kids will:

• ​Create character paper puppets.

• ​Animate using hands-on Stop-Motion techniques with their puppets.

• ​Write silly character descriptions to bring their creations to life.

• ​Explore a physical character petting-zoo for tactile inspiration.

​AI Play

​We will experiment with friendly, age-appropriate tech tools to see how artificial intelligence handles character design. Kids will:

• ​Generate a brand-new digital character and see how it animates using Gemini

• ​Generate quirky, AI-assisted character descriptions (Gemini)

• ​Explore our digital AI Play gallery to see what everyone created (Padlet)

​Augmented Play

​The ultimate crossover! We bring physical and digital art together. Kids will:

• ​Animate their very own hand-drawn physical characters using the AI tool Animated Drawings by Meta Demo Lab

• ​Expand their handwritten stories and descriptions with Gemini on facilitator's iPad, closely monitored to prevent harmful interaction patterns

• ​Explore the final Augmented Play gallery (Padlet) to celebrate their masterpieces, organized by the facilitator

​Event Details

• ​Date: Sunday, July 19th

• ​Time: 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM

• ​Location: Downtown Campbell (Exact address provided upon registration)

• ​Target Age: 6 to 8 years old

​Registration Info

​Spaces are strictly limited so that every child gets hands-on guidance and access to materials.

​Secure your child's spot today! For more information about the broader art education program, visit okipie.com

​Research Consent

​This workshop is part of a research being conducted by two award-winning early education researchers Dr. Sonia Tiwari and Dr. Jennifer Chen. We aim to study the impact on "creative joy" when young children work on hands-on, AI-augmented, and fully-generated projects.

We will take pictures of completed projects, record audio comments by children describing their creative process take photos of children working on their projects (faces will blurred and identities hidden for research documentation).

​An anonymized Padlet gallery will be shared with families to view completed projects without any identifiable photos of children.

​The research will be published shared with families using the email provided in the registration, by the end of the year.

For any questions regarding this study or workshop, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Sonia Tiwari (your workshop facilitator) at [email protected]