I designed this video for kindergarten through second grade music students and for substitute or regular music teachers who need standards-aligned learning experiences that work with or without a music specialist. The instructional video introduces students to the traditional folk song “Froggy Went a Courtin’.” For young learners, I created a miniature hidden world scaled for small animals to enhance storytelling and draw learners in with a playful tone and a sense of wonder. I combine story and imagery to create an experience that teachers can extend through facilitator materials and guided classroom activities including singing, movement and discussion. The video is intentionally brief to align with young learners, supporting a transition into singing, movement and discussion.

In this project, I worked across subject matter expertise, instructional design and media development, translating musical knowledge into a structured learning experience. I researched the historical origins of the folk song, traced its transmission across sources, created an original musical arrangement and performed and recorded the vocals. I defined the learning objectives, mapped the learner experience and designed classroom extensions that support participation and discussion after viewing the video, while producing, editing and sequencing illustrated scenes that structure the experience.

The central design challenge was to structure the lesson to support participation across an entire class period. The design needed to engage young learners through story and music and invite participation throughout a class lasting thirty to forty-five minutes. Because the design relies on the natural unfolding of the song, I chose video as a brief instructional anchor experience, allowing visual and auditory channels to work together so illustrations can be placed in relation to the music and story.

During the creation of this video, I encountered a challenge maintaining consistent character identity across AI-generated images and video frames. Across renders, the imagery sometimes underwent stylistic drift. Froggy occasionally appeared with a painterly texture, while in other frames was rendered with a slick, glossy surface inconsistent with the aesthetic of the video. Proportions shifted, making characters appear unstable across scenes. These issues required ongoing correction and careful selection of frames to preserve the intended storybook-like visual environment. Working through these challenges helped me refine prompting strategies and improve my process for maintaining visual continuity in future projects.