Christmas Movie Unit - Day 2

It's A Wonderful Life

Our second day of our Movie Unit was focused on the classic Christmas tale, It's A Wonderful Life. Now, I have to admit that I had not actually seen this movie until today...I know, I know it's like blasphemous or unpatriotic or something equally as terrible...and we actually didn't get to complete the whole thing as our movie was interrupted by Baby L's speech therapy appointment. But we will be finishing the movie later.

It was a little hard to prepare lessons for this movie, since I hadn't seen it. There are a couple links on the site that I got the Christmas Movie Unit idea from, but they are geared towards older kids. I knew that the main character in the movie had a guardian angel, so I decided to theme our lessons around angels.

First we read about biblical angels at this site.

Then we did an art study of famous paintings with angels at this site. We continued to dialogue about biblical angels, specifically the descriptions of what angels look like (and the lack of biblical descriptions) and how artists have given their own interpretations.

The kids then drew their own angels.

We also worked on some simple spelling and copywork worksheets (Christmas and angel themed) from Enchanted Learning. Some worksheets are available for free there, but we have a membership which allows us access to all of thier worksheets.

BTW, here's a picture of our Who Pudding that we made for our Grinch study yesterday:


I've never had rice pudding before and the best I can really give it was that it tasted ...interesting. The kids seemed to like it, but I think it was really just the novelty of it that they liked.

Tomorrow: Miracle on 34th Street

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Christmas Movie Unit - Day 1

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I recently came across these homeschool lesson plans for a Christmas Movie Unit. This is a perfect time of the year to do a unit based on movies because we're just too busy to do a unit based on anything else! Besides, its impossible to get through the season and not curl up to watch a few Christmas classics, so we might as well turn them into a homeschool lesson.

The hardest part was narrowing it down to just one movie a day. Our plan for the week:

Monday: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Cartoon)

Tuesday: It's a Wonderful Life

Wednesday: Miracle on 34th Street

Thursday: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Friday: The Nutcracker Prince

So this morning we all gathered around to watch the Grinch's heart grow three sizes and then discussed these questions about the movie. We also took an online quiz about the movie here.

To add a little living math and home-ec skills, we also made Who Pudding. It'll be ready in the morning.

While we were waiting for the pudding to cook, the kids made these Grinch Masks and worked this Whoville Word search.

Our big project of the day to create a Whoville newspaper. The kids searched through our own local newspaper to see what a newspaper should look like.

Here they are with their finished product:

Yeah, the masks are a little creepy. Anyone have a handgun and a getaway car?


The Whoville Chronicles based out of Whoville, Onthespeck (get it?) turned out great though. G9 and A7 were both assigned articles to write and all four of the oldest came up with Who advertisements.


Advertisements:

G9: Flying Dee Stoogle for only $1.

A7: Buy your Rainbow Tree today at Toys-R-Who.

E5: The Sock Walk. It's Remote Controlled and helps you walk when you've broken your leg!

H4: The Dora Who Doll. She talks, walks, and moves her hands. Buy at Who-Mart!

Articles:

Miracle on Who Lane!
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
and came back with it.
By: Gavin Wavin Who

The day before Christmas the Grinch heard everybody getting ready for Christmas. That night he decided to steal Christmas!

He dressed up as St. Nick, using red paper and pillow stuffing. He put a horn on his dog Max which made him look like a reindeer.

"Well, I was just jealous of everybody," the Grinch told reporters. "I was thinking that if I stole the Who’s Christmas, then they would all be miserable like me."

The Grinch rode down to Who-Ville on his sleigh and began to take everything.

Six year old Eli Wiili Who said, "He took all of my toys! My bang-boogle, my airplane with a exploding dee-stoogle. He even took our roast beast!"

When the Grinch was going through the Who houses, little Cindy Lou Who almost caught the Grinch. She saw him trying to take her Christmas tree and asked him what he was doing. But he thought of a lie, and gave Cindy Lou Who a glass of water and sent her to bed.

Then the Grinch drove his sleigh full of Who stuff to the top of the Who Mountain to wait to hear the sad cries of Who people.

"Instead of Who cries," the Grinch said. "I heard the singing of Whos. They were singing and singing. It made my heart three sizes bigger!"

After his change of heart , the Grinch decided to take the Who stuff back down to Who-Ville. He gave all the toys back to the children. Then the Grinch himself carved the roast beast during the annual Who Christmas feast.

Grinch Almost Caught!
Cindy Lou Who’s Story
By: Aubrey Wabrey Who

When the Grinch was stealing from the Whos, he stopped at Cindy Lou Whos house. Cindy Lou
Who is 2 years old and is very small. She has short blonde hair and wears pink dresses.

As the Grinch was trying to stuff the tree up the chimney, an ornament fell and woke Cindy from her sleep. She went downstairs to see what was going on.

"I saw Santy Claus trying to stuff my tree up the chimney!" Cindy Lou Who explained.
But it really wasn’t Santa Claus that Cindy saw. It was the Grinch. But he told Cindy a lie.

"I told little Cindy that the light was broken on the tree and that I needed to take it to my workshop to fix it." the Grinch told reporters.

"I believed Santy Claus - I mean, Mr. Grinch. He gave me a glass of water and sent me to bed." said Cindy Lou Who.

In the morning, little Cindy Lou Who woke up to no presents and no tree. "I felt really sad that Mr. Grinch tricked me. But even though we didn‘t have presents, we still had love." Cindy then went out with her family to sing Christmas songs.

"I was so surprised when Mr. Grinch came back with our presents. I always forgive my friends, so I forgave Mr. Grinch." Pin It Now!