A 3D animated steam-punk set in a futuristic 1892.
A young girl builds a steam powered robot but has trouble getting it started. After turning up her power source too high the machine explodes, spraying cranks, pistons and sprockets around the room.
There is a surprising and touching ending as we discover that the robot is alive and has saved our heroine from a falling girder.
Teaching Ideas
- Watch the film up to the title screen. Ask the children if they can guess what it is going to be about. Are there any clues.
- Watch some more and ask the children to come up with questions. (Why is she building it? where are her parents? Why is she not at school? etc)
- The children can collect vocabulary to do with machinery, cranks, pipes, spanners, sprockets and bolts. They can then use this vocabulary in their written work.
- Design their own robots and label with descriptions.
- Create the bare bones for the story and use these to write a narrative.
- Create a journal page for the girl, charting her successes and failures over a week. Perhaps using language to show her frustration.
- What happens next? Children write the next part of the story.
- Write instructions for building a robot.
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