My Mother’s Day
Ironically, I am creating this blog, and writing my first post on Mother’s Day. Is it ironic? Maybe not, maybe it’s just fitting? This blog, after all, is about a homeschooling mommy (me) blogging about mommy things in a home-school life.
I could go back to the beginning (homeschooling day #1) and start talking to you about the failures and successes of my official start date (or the unofficial start). But I won’t. I figure the easiest and less stressful approach (sticky note: avoiding stress wherever possible is an art form I want to master) is to begin with what’s going on today.
You will soon learn that I rarely say no to my kids, however much I’m tempted to, even when they are asking to do something I know they can’t do. More on this in a future post. I promise.
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| My toddler painting my toenails |
Ok, so where was I? Oh yes, the three of them did my makeup. I wore it for a while (around the house) before taking just some of it off to go out to eat.
We ate BBQ at a restaurant we recently discovered. I don’t know what people thought or if they noticed. Buuuuut….. each of my eyes had a different combination of colors of eye shadow. I wore a big pink bow on my head and my hair up in a half-up ponytail.
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| Piñata (sculpture) in progress by Kindergarten Drop Out |
Once back at home, I got my Mother’s Day presents. Handmade pinatas, and handmade cards by my two daughters. (Sticky note: Whenever at the store I hear my children say “Can we buy this?” I answer “No, you can make this.”
KDO’s piñata was a sculpture of me but isn’t finished so it’s now a sculpture of papi. It’ll be done by Father’s Day, she decided. She even took off the high heels she made for it.
Learning with Star Wars
So how did Spa Day turn into Star Wars Evening?
We have a tradition of making Friday nights ‘movie nights.’ On occasion, we do the same on a Saturdays, especially if we didn’t get to on Friday. On rare occasions, we have movie night on a Sunday, if we get dinner started early enough.
We recently watched all six star wars movies in a span of two weekends. Tonight, we are watching the behind-the-scenes bonus cd. Bonus material can sometimes be really cool to watch and educational (that’s a real bonus). Artists might be filmed sculpting creatures for animators to use are reference when creating the digital footage. Or maybe you get a glimpse of a makeup artist applying special effects makeup on an actor. Other times (most times), bonus material is not worth watching because it’s not much more than re-watching clips of the movie you just saw while the actors talk about how much the director is so awesome. This will be the case even when the footage is called “The Making Of.”
Star Wars has amazing behind-the-scenes footage. It really shows the how in movie-making magic and there’s so much of it, hours in fact.
Here are a few things you can find in the making of Star Wars:
There is a scene in the movie where the non-existing environment is actually a painting done by an artist on glass!
They explain how the walking motion of elephants was studied by the crew so that they can later try to recreate the same movement with some animatronics.
Scenes that are created with stop motion animation.
Creation of creatures and costumes.
Character development sketches and drawings.
The creation of sounds in the movie such as the use of parking meters to create the sound you hear when actors are cocking pistols.
They even go as far as showing clips of short movies made by fans and how those fans create their films.
They talk about stop animation with clay and show how even kids have created movies using this movie-making technique.
There is so much more in just what we watched today.
So my tip for the day is… if you have a kid that is interested in movies or maybe you feel watches too much tv and you are having a hard time getting him/her to do something more educational, start with letting him/her check out the behind-the-scenes. See if your child becomes interested in how movies are made. You never know, it might spark an idea or inspire their imagination.