Project 139: A History of Music

As it's been a year since we last did a music project, and the ukulele classes have been on hold due to the coronavirus, we decided it was time to do another music focused project.

Obviously the history of music is a rather big subject, so we started by revisiting the previous classical music project (Project 90: Classical Music), and then went through the development of twentieth century popular music with the help of Turn It Up! A pitch-perfect history of music that rocked the world. 

This week's reading

Unsurprisingly, most of the week was spent listening to a wide variety of music, although we did have time for some other activities as well.

We explored Stravinsky's Firebird using CBBC resources, and the children created their own Firebird inspired pictures.

Firebirds

Of course you can't have a music project without playing some music, so after introducing them to the blues we got them to write their own 12 bar blues songs. We created a template based on an online example (unfortunately we've lost the link!) and combined it with three ukulele chords they know.

Solomon's Vegetable Blues:

"I've got the Blues,The I have to eat my vegetables BluesEating courgette makes me sickSo a Domino's pizza would do the trick I've got the Blues, The I have to eat my vegetables Blues."

Monica's Going to Bed Blues

"I've got the Blues, The going to bed BluesI would rather stay up lateand go out for a skateI've got the BluesThe going to bed Blues"

Singing the Blues

They both really enjoyed singing their own blues songs, and insisted on singing them to their various grandparents over the phone/Skype.

Finally they explored some of the different elements that go into making up a song with another BBC resource.

Next Project: Presentations

Project 138: Ponies and Unicorns

This week's project was Monica's pick as it was her birthday, and she picked 'ponies and unicorns' in typical young girl fashion!

They created their own stories about a unicorn and designed their own unicorn and gave it some superpowers using some Twinkl worksheets. 

We also read a book about horses and ponies together, and the children had to read War Horse and write their own book review (using a template from Twinkl). 

This week's reading

They all enjoyed making some unicorn models using Fimo oven bake clay (despite having to do it twice after the oven was put on too high a temperature the first time round!).

Fimo Unicorns

The also made their own unicorn horns to wear for the birthday tea. 

Unicorn horns

Finally we finished the week by watching Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

 

Next project: History of Music

Project 137: Lewis Carroll's Alice Books

The Alice books have been on our list of potential projects for a while as there are so many different avenues for exploration. 

To get an overview of the two stories we read the Usborne versions as a family, before Solomon and Monica did a Poetry Society worksheet on imaginary words and an Alice differentiated reading worksheet from Twinkl.

This week's Alice books

The children were expected to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass themselves, before being subjected to two presentations we put together after reading The Annotated Alice. One on text and context, and one on the maths of the Alice books. 

The children have played chess (the backdrop to Through the Looking Glass) before, but have little experience of cards (which appear in ...Wonderland), so we introduced them to a couple of simple card games: Old Maid, and Beggar-my-neighbour. We also got them to make their own card characters:

Monica (left) and Sol's card characters

One of the most memorable scenes from the Alice books is the Hatter's Tea Party, so the children helped make our own afternoon tea:

Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Finally we watched the old Disney animated version of the story. 

Next week's project: Ponies and Unicorns

Project 136: Leonardo da Vinci

This week's project was picked after we spotted that the animated film Leo da Vinci was available, and we thought that a project on the quintessential Renaissance Man would allow for a wide variety of activities. 

We started the week with some short videos introducing Leonardo, and watched a documentary about some of his inventions. 

We explored Leonardo's paintings, and changes in the Renaissance, in a number of books, before the children did a colour-by-number version of the Mona Lisa, and a portrait of each other in oil paints. 

The week's art books

Some enigmatic portraits

The children also tried their hand at building a self-supporting bridge with lolly sticks, although despite their best efforts, they needed help with da Vinci's solution in the end. 

da Vinci lolly stick bridge

Next Project: Lewis Carroll's Alice books

Project 135: Tom's Midnight Garden

As the coronavirus lockdown continues we decided to make use of the time stuck indoors to tackle another book: Tom's Midnight Garden. The tale of a boy who discovers a magical garden at the back of the house where his aunt and uncle live after the clock strikes thirteen.

Tom's Midnight Garden

It's quite a lengthy book, but both the children enjoyed it, and it has aged very well considering it was written in the 1950s. There wasn't a lot of time for project work besides the reading of the book, although we did do some Twinkl worksheets and a word search.

We also had time to watch the 1999 film version - which sticks closely to the original story.

Next week's project: Leonardo da Vinci.

Project 134: World War II

World War II was picked as the project coincided with the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

We started the week with an introduction to World War 2 with a presentation and lots of books.

WW2 Books

We played Memoir '44, a strategy game based around a number of D-Day battles. The age difference between the two children probably reflects the difference in opinions. Solomon (age 7) describes it as "the best board game in the world", Monica (age 5) describes it as "rubbish".

Memoir '44

Monica was, however, far keener on the week's film, the BBC film version of Nina Bawden's Carrie's War. They also re-watched a couple of films based in WW2 they had seen previously: The Sound of Music, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. 

For our VE Day tea we had some traditional WW2 foods - including some spam sandwiches and we made an egg-free cake.

Spam and egg-free cake

Finally, we finished the week by starting to make an Airfix Spitfire (although it's a bit trickier than we expected!):

Supermarine Spitfire

Next project: Tom's Midnight Garden

Project 133: The United Kingdom

In an attempt to make use of some of the BBC's Home Learning resources, we decided to do a project on the United Kingdom. We went on a journey around Britain at the end of Solomon's first year of home education (Project 41: Britain), and looked at Scotland more closely earlier in the year (Project 119: Scotland and Burns' Night), so it seemed a good time to look at the U.K. as a whole.

As well as the BBC resources, we used some Twinkl resources for UK maps and flags:

Flags of the UK

We used a wide range of online videos, and stories from Great Stories from British History, to give a potted history to the UK and some of its stories. 

We also made sure to discuss some of the foods synonymous with Britain, from afternoon tea to fish and chips and a cooked breakfast. 

An exploration of some British food

To coincide with this week's project we watched The Black Cauldron. We've watched films with an element of Scottish culture (e.g., Brave) and Irish culture (e.g., The Secret of Kells) before, but we hadn't previously watched anything particularly Welsh (which The Black Cauldron supposedly is, even if it's not obvious).

Next Project: World War II