How to a activate an animation of SVG Objects from Javascript

I am trying to control objects that I have created with SVG by clicking on a button and using Javascript to activate a prescribed animation sequence.
I tried 2 ideas that did not work
1. I changed one of the attributes of the <animate> object. This was an existing <animate> object. I was just trying to get it to activate once again.
2. I created an <animate> Node and appended it as a Child to the SVG Object I was trying to animate.