Pixars Brave

On our trip to visit F, and take him to his next base we took O to see her first movie in the movie theater.  Honestly, I was pretty concerned that Brave might be to violent for her, but she did really well.  She loved the movie, and I am not sure if it was just because she was with daddy in a big theater or if it was actually the movie.  Either way, she has become a little obsessed with Merida (the main character).  

When we got home, I decided to put that excitement to good use, and made school activities for her to do.  We picked up a few level 1 and 2 readers based on the book, as well as action figures.

We made our own story of Brave.  O decorated the pages, and told me the basic plot with quite a few details.  I had to give her very few prompts and she was able to tell me the entire story.

Here is a bow and arrow she drew by herself.  I am not sure if you can tell in the photograph but she has the arrow facing the wrong way** See below

This is Merida, red hair and blue dress with yellow trim.

These are the action figures that are so tiny and those triplets have been lost and found so many times I am not sure how we still have them.  We have done several things with these.  Some of which are:

put the characters in order from largest to smallest

describe the relation of each other characters (who is the mom? etc)

counting

sorting who changes into bears

re-enacting the story

making our own story (this one has been hard for her, she keeps reverting back to the movie plot)

hiding the characters in the room and finding them (bad idea--we lost a triplet, but then found him)

we matched the characters to the first letters of their names (M is for Merida)

I also had grand intentions of making a sensory box for her to play with these, but I couldn't find tiny arrows, or very many things that I thought would make it worth my effort.

There is a family tapestry in the movie, and we created our own using those handy plastic grid like things.  This was a great opportunity for me to teach O how to make shapes while sewing.  I normally hand her fabric in a kid friendly hoop and a needle/thread and let her make whatever.  This time we decided on a design and practiced making X's and boxes.  It was a nice change of pace for us.

And finally, we made bow and arrows out of popsicle sticks and Q-tips (thank you Pinterest!)  I should have known from the moment she drew the arrow facing the wrong way in her story that I needed to better explain how the bow and arrow was used.**  

She held the bow backwards and the arrow backwards and which basically aimed a non-cotton ball side of the Q-tip right into her eye ball.  Oh My!  She never hurt herself, and it was rather humorous.  

We even watched a few people in the archery portion of the Olympics to help her see how to use it properly.  

Although I do feel like I overdid the theme, O really enjoyed it.  We may have to do more theme things in our schoolwork when I plan our next 10 weeks.