We love movies over here. Every Sunday is Pizza and Movie Night, and we look forward to sharing new movies together (I pre-ordered Tangled from the Disney Movie Club and hope it comes tomorrow, in time for this Sunday!) We also love to tie movies into school whenever possible. We often will watch a related movie whenever we finish a read-aloud (We're currently reading Mary Poppins, will watch the movie when we finish, and have tickets for the Broadway show coming to Seattle in May!) So when the opportunity came up to review these new movie guides from Zeezok Publishing, I quickly volunteered!
The guides cost $12.99 each, and contain a topic overview (giving historical background information and aiding understanding of the setting that may otherwise evade them), movie synopsis, and 10 learning activities to accompany the movie. These activities range from creative writing, to hands-on, to worldview and family discussions.
We asked for the guide for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, a movie we own and my children already enjoy. There weren't many of the guides (or rather, many guides available for movies) that were appropriate for the age of my children, so it was an easy choice. And I figured this would be a great way to tie in some extra depth to the film.
"This guide contains a topic overview, movie synopsis, and ten learning activities based on this family-friendly film. Learn more about the hardships families faced in the Great Depression. Decipher coded messages using hobo signs. Design your own Depression era fashion show. Be a journalist, like Kit, and write a newspaper article. Play “Who Am I?” with your family and friends. Learn Depression-related vocabulary. Distinguish irony from foreshadowing. Determine whether prejudice is ever acceptable. Share personal responses to the “For Family Discussion” questions and experience life in middle America during the worst economic depression in American history."
We used the questions as kind of a trivia game, and our children loved it! I gave them the question pages to use during the movie, and although they'd filled in very little by the end, their awareness was "up", and they were able to answer almost all of the questions (including a fun "who am I?" section) after the film.
My overall impression (despite several typos in the text, which I have to admit are a bit of a pet peeve for me), was that the guides were very well put together. There were a lot of ideas for launching the viewing of this movie into a pretty in-depth study of the depression (including giving a good overall sense of environmental and social issues facing people during that time, and references to media and historical figures.) Is it worth 12.99, in my opinion? If you use all of the features and activites available, then yes, I think it is. If you plan to pick and choose just a few items, or just the question guides, then perhaps not. Zeezok claims to have a movie available for almost every time period in history... if your students are older (almost all are geared for middle school/high school age), these could be a great addition to your history curriculum, or a nice side trip as a unit study.
Currently available titles (for which they say all DVDs are available from Netflix... I haven't seen most of them!):
- 12 Angry Men
- A Man for All Seasons
- A Tale of Two Cities
- Amazing Grace
- Ben Hur
- Cromwell
- Driving Miss Daisy
- Father Goose
- Flyboys
- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
- Inherit the Wind
- Jason and the Argonauts
- Johnny Tremain
- Kit Kittredge
- Knights of the Round Table
- Les Miserables
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
- My Side of the Mountain
- One Night With the King
- Scarlet Pimpernel
- Sergeant York
- The Adventures of Robin Hood
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Hiding Place
- The Red Badge of Courage
- The Ten Commandments
- To Kill a Mockingbird
if the movie hasn't arrived yet, you might want to put it off a bit longer. The movie actually combines the original Mary Poppins book and the second book in the series - Mary Poppins Come Back. I don't know how in depth you guys go with the book/movie comparison, but the movie runs closer to Mary Poppins Comes Back than Mary Poppins. If you can't wait, maybe make plans to read MP Comes Back after seeing the movie. The other Poppins books are pretty good, too!
Posted by: Paige | 04/02/2011 at 07:38 AM