I had wonderful plans to start a history unit, based on the movie, Night At The Museum. That was before I realized how grey, cold, and wintry it was going to be today. We managed to drag through our morning work, but by the afternoon we were ready to snuggle up together on the couch and watch a movie.
Not all of the children are old enough to watch Ben Stiller (even in a slightly educational, "family" film), so we tossed out our history lesson, and watched The Tale of Despereaux instead. Before today I hadn't read much about the movie, so I didn't realize it was based on a children's book. That was a nice added bonus.
We watched the movie, and then played around on the official movie website for a while. I knew things were going to work out well, as soon as I saw the button to create a story in multiple languages. I think the children might have rolled there eyes a little, but I never pass up a chance for a German lesson. There were also some fun games and printables.
I had hoped to find the book, by Kate Dicamillo, at the library, but it doesn't seem to be in our local holdings. We managed to find a printable version of the first three chapters though, which worked for our story time tonight. And, I have hopes of working out the bugs in the Library2Go site, in order to access an audio version of the book.
In the meantime, we printed out finger puppets and a castle scene from the movie, for some pretend play (we liked the ones we found at www.activityvillage.co.uk/the_tale_of_despereaux.htm). I suppose, we could push on into a full blown literature unit. I noticed several studies based on Dicamillo's work bouncing around online. But sometimes, it's just nice to let a book be for reading, a movie for watching, and a snow day for fun.
It's great to be a homeschooler!
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