I let the girls decide on what would likely be their last home-school Disney topic. They spent a long time weighing up a few ideas before deciding on the topic of Peter Pan, which I was more than happy about!
The first day of our topic was lovely and sunny, so we immediately began out science investigation based around shadow, because we all know how Peter loves his shadow. The girls had to predict what would happen to their shadow during the day, and then draw around each other at hourly intervals to see if they were correct. Whilst they rightly predicted that their shadow would in fact move (even stating which direction it would move in) they didn’t think about the length of the shadow changing which led to lots of interesting discussion and other work based around the position and length of shadows in different scenarios.
They also drew each other’s silhouettes.
This topic had so much scope for lovely literacy work. The first thing we talked about was the song ‘You can fly, you can fly’ which talks about wonderful thoughts. We had a lovely discussion about our wonderful thoughts and looked at how we could use high quality words to describe them. We also revisited similes and metaphors.
Another thing the girls loved writing was a Neverland acrostic poem.
We created wanted posters where the girls chose the character they wanted as their criminal and wrote a description of both the character and the crime.
The girls wrote lovely letters to Wendy as if they were Peter after a bit of role play to explore how he might be feeling not seeing his London friends for a while. I think this really made the girls think about missing their own friends too.
The next Literacy task was to create a story plan which they then turned into a storyboard for a short story featuring Peter. It had to contain an opening, build up, problem, resolution and ending.
The final literacy task was a limerick about their chosen character. They really loved doing these (we had spontaneous limericks about family members for the next 5 days!!) and they were really keen to write them all by themselves, although they did check to make sure they could include the rude bits.
In Maths we did a few lessons linked to the topic. The first was some coordinates work based on treasure maps which they really enjoyed.
The Maths Mysteries from Twinkl are always a firm favourite with the girls, so I found two pirate themed ones at their levels and they spent a whole morning working on those.
I also created some Peter Pan word problems at the girls’ level which they enjoyed.
Another activity that was based on position and direction so maths/ geography themed was the Neverland map activity I created. The girls were given a sheet on instructions stating where different areas of Neverland should be drawn on a blank map, and they had to put them in the correct location. We then tea-stained the map to make it look old and sprinkled coffee grains on top before leaving to dry (we would have singed the edges, but Winnie has a huge fear of fire so decided not to risk it!)
We spent a lot of time creating artwork during this topic. The first piece we created was a Neverland scene within the outline of Peter Pan’s head. The only thing I gave the girls was the template to draw around. They then followed instructions to use watercolours to create the pictures. I think these are one of my favourite things they’ve made during lockdown!
They did some work on cartoon style drawings in preparation for the storyboards they created, and both chose Tinkerbell.
The girls also created mermaid collages which they put onto bubble paint backgrounds. Bubble painting is lots of fun and really easy. You just mix paint, water and washing up liquid in a pot and blow through a straw to create bubbles before placing the paper on top of them. We used different shades of blue, and apart from knocking one pot all over the table/ floor/ themselves, it worked really well.
The mermaids were simply drawn on a separate piece of paper and decorated before being cut out and stuck onto the bubble background.
In ICT they worked on Scratch Junior to use simple coding to create different Peter Pan scenes. They had a selection to choose from, but both chose to have Tink/ Pete surprising each other.
We spent an isolated day studying the work of Mary Blair, who was one of the artists who worked on Peter Pan. The girls love her style (especially the mural in the Contemporary hotel) and really enjoyed carrying out research to find out more about her. Polly didn’t feel great so Winnie created a Mary Blair themed lego structure while she waited for her sister to feel better.
They then created their own Mary Blair style Small World castles, suing pockets of colour. It was such a nice activity to round off a lovely day, even if I was a slight bit stressed trying to reserve Disney park days whilst doing it!
The final task for this project was to create their own episode of Be Our Chef (we love the real show on Disney+). The first thing they did was to create their food designs. Polly went for ‘Skull Rock Buns’ and Winnie chose ‘Ben Light Cookies’ (she insists on calling Big Ben ‘Ben Light Clock!)
Once they’d designed their dishes they came up with a plan for the show and then Polly directed which scenes to film in which order. It took almost a full day, but they had so much fun and I love the final outcome.
We really enjoyed this topic and could have spent a lot longer on it, but the girls want to squeeze an Alternative Fairy Stories topic in (because we are reading The Land of Stories at the minute), so we decided to move on.
I hope you enjoyed the blog and maybe got some ideas. The Dropbox link for the resources I made can be found here if they are any use to you.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m80d46hfiu6bg6e/AADRCpUCr-O8OAmTgwKbk6U3a?dl=0
Oh, and in case you have been questioning Winnie’s outfit choices, she’s going through a slight ‘Luke from Disney Channel’s Jessie’ obsession. Well, maybe more than ‘slight’ seeing as she dresses like him and made this life-sized version of him which now scares me to death every time I catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye!!
Take care and stay safe.
Doodle & Peg Do Disney 