Ok, so it’s clearly not Disney. But I know a lot of you are also fans of the wizarding world so I thought I’d share this anyway (plus it will give the girls something to read in years to come to remember these strange days!)
I decided to spread this topic over two weeks as the girls have been feeling the effects of the lockdown a lot more these past few weeks, so I wanted to give them some time for relaxing rather than going at it at full throttle the way we have been until now. They also worked through a week of the Easter holidays, so I decided they deserved a slower pace.
We started the week looking at descriptive writing. We read the passage from Harry Potter that describes the Great Hall and the girls made notes. They then drew the hall using only things that had been mentioned. We talked about things that were missing from the description and why the author left them out. The following Literacy session we switched it around so that the girls watched the film showing the Great Hall at the Yule Ball whilst taking notes and then wrote their own paragraph describing it. They both really enjoyed this, especially as it meant Literacy involved both drawing and watching a movie!!
The girls also used similes and metaphors to describe a chosen character before creating their own character profiles as if they were a Wizard attending Hogwarts. I created profiles for them on https://www.wizardingworld.com and they used the website to find the house they would be in and their patronus as well as trying out other activities. They then filled in the wizrard profile sheet I created for them.
We decided to draw half portraits in art. This involved giving the girls a full portrait of their chosen character to copy, and a portrait of only half the face for them to complete. I wasn’t sure if it would be too difficult for them, but they did really well.
In music we listened to the Harry Potter theme tune and discussed other music written by John Williams. I was really surprised at how many pieces the girls knew. We then had a lovely time listening and commenting on different pieces, talking about the atmosphere they created (although trying to describe Jaws without making Winnie scared to go in the sea ever again proved a bit tricky. ‘A shark in the water that people were scared of so they had to capture him’ was as good as it got!)
We also worked on the Young Voices song for this year, and created our own mini choir to perform it!
We decided to base Science around Herbology and look at how plants grow. We talked about seeds and what the girls thought they would need to grow. They then planned an experiment to test their prediction (they even remembered to include a control thanks to ‘The Inbestigators’ TV show!) We are now eagerly awaiting the results although they may not get watered daily as I possibly forget on occasion!!
Most of our maths lessons were based on the objectives recommended by the school, but as Polly has been looking at area and Winnie has been working hard on her times tables I decided to see if they could calculate the floorplan area of Hogwarts. I printed a blank plan and added my own measurements as it meant I could differentiate and keep them to times tables I knew Winnie would know whilst pushing Polly with larger numbers. Adding up all the areas proved a bit tricky as both were trying to do it in their heads and kept forgetting where they were/ what number they were remembering, but they got there in the end.
(I’ve included a copy of the blank plan in the Dropbox link to resources along with other blank outlines should you wish to use them).
We knew that we wanted to end the topic with a Harry Potter Feast, and as we were collecting a supermarket shop on the Saturday we decided to plan the menu so we could add the relevant items to the list. We read a section of the book describing the feast in the Great Hall as well as watching a portion of the film. We then made a menu with the girls creating character names for the items (notice how they picked all the unhealthy things…not a vegetable in sight!!)
The second week of work focussed on the girls creating their own Harry Potter movie. Firstly, they worked together to plan the storyline and create a storyboard.
They then wrote a section in their choice of format ( Polly chose narrative, Winnie chose play-script)
They then made their own trailer for the movie with the help of Daddy! We used imovie on the ipad to create the trailer. The girls love using this and planning out the video clips they need to take for it. So much fun!
In art the girls followed a Youtube Tutorial to draw Harry before using thee ideas they’d learnt to draw themselves in the same style.
They used both the Draw So Cute and Art for Kids Hub tutorials. They have lots of different characters to draw too and are a great way to get a peaceful 10 minutes (until somebody goes into meltdown because they’ve drawn something wrong!!) Here are the links if you’d like to have a go:
We also took part in Rob Biddulph’s world record attempt to have the largest ever online art lesson. The girls had been out in the paddling pool so were dripping wet and freezing at the time, but they really enjoyed it. I think they took his ‘make it your own’ comment to the extreme though!
We decided to use our exercise time to go on a Harry Potter scavenger hunt. We tried to think of things/ characters from the story that we may find a version of walking around our local area, and I created a tick sheet (which again can be found in the drop box folder). This was a lovely way to spend an hour, and the girls would have happily walked all day to complete the sheet!
We decided to try and create animations showing wand movements for different spells on FlipaClip (which we love) but the girls were tired as it was the end of the day so I think we may redo them next week as they weren’t happy with how they turned out.
On our final morning we decided to try a few Harry Potter logic problems I found on the Royal Baloo webpage. The girls really enjoyed these. The link can be found here:
We then spent the day baking (and tidying!) for the Harry Potter feast. We made Bertie Botts biscuits (regular cookies but with jelly beans instead of chocolate chips), Mandrake brownie pots (a circle of chocolate brownie in a cut-down cake case placed inside a small plant pot with an edible fondant-icing mandrake on top) and chocolate frogs.
Luckily Granny and Pop-Pops sent a picnic parcel for lunch so we were able to have a break and eat that before we made labels and set the table ready for our tea time feast!
Teatime was lovely, especially the sweet treats that the girls made!
We all really enjoyed this topic, although I’m really glad I slowed the pace as it was definitely a case of ‘almost half-term-itis’! The glorious sunshine would have made a heavy workload even harder, but luckily we found time for playing in the garden which was much needed.
The girls also had a lovely surprise. On past trips they have befriended a lovely lady called Skylar who is one of the CMs from Animal Kingdom Lodge, and she had written them a beautiful letter as well as sending a postcard. Her thoughtfulness really made the girl’s day.
We are having a week off next week but the girls have decided they want to work on their own projects (current plan is the Disney channel classics of ‘Jessie’ and ‘Raven’s Home’ but that could change) as well as hopefully having a lot of fun in the sun.
Whatever your plans are, I hope you have a magical time.
The Dropbox link to resources can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/95x5qgr2yd1s4xs/AACiWvJ9zBbDBkx-spB0WE5Xa?dl=0
Doodle & Peg Do Disney 