Project 143: Basketball

This week's project was mainly picked because the basketball game NBA 2K20 was free this month on the PS4, and we haven't looked closely at a sport since Project 82: Football.

We started the week by watching videos on the rules of basketball, the last match by the local team, and some of the best recent plays. We also got a good book on basketball, which emphasised the role of numbers in the game and included some suggested activities; this is the second National Geographic Kids book we've bought (see Project 139: A History of Music) and we'll make use of them again.

A good Basketball book

Much of the project work this week (when the weather allowed) was throwing the basketball around, including a trip to the local hoops, and seeing how far the children could through the ball.

NBA and WNBA stars of the future

The children both enjoyed basketball, both in real life and on the computer, although as is typical, Solomon enjoyed the computer game more than Monica. After watching Space Jam early in the week, Solomon insisted on playing with the Chicago Bulls.

Next project: Pushing on with Programming

Project 142: Arthur Ransome and 'The Big Six'

At Solomon's suggestion we had Arthur Ransome's The Big Six as this week's project as they had enjoyed watching Swallows and Amazons and Coot Club the previous week.

The book itself was a hefty 500 pages, so Monica and Solomon were tasked with reading that on their own rather than trying to read it all as a family.

The Big Six

There were a number of quizzes in the back of the book, which they both did very well on (so we can be assured that they read it properly!) and we also got them to write book reviews using a template from Twinkl. One word of warning, however, while the quizzes in the Vintage Classics version were good, the book itself did have some language that would be considered unacceptable today.

As well as reading the book we also introduced some Ransome-esque activities from the Arthur Ransome Society website.

They made some semaphore flags, and practised sending messages to each other.

Semaphore activity

We bought a book on knots, and got them to learn a few of the basics, starting with the reef knot.

The reef knot

The children were also tasked with creating 'Hollywoods', which is what Ransome called the pictures he drew based on posed photographs he took.

Solomon and Monica's 'Hollywoods'

We finished the week by watching The Big Six on Amazon Prime, which we were surprised to see actually had the children's great-grandfather in as an extra!

Next week: Basketball.