The First Movie: Movie Making Part II

Last week, I began a series of posts on movie making and my kids. Today, I will continue by telling you about their first movie. As I told you in my previous post, the next school year, when it came time for me to decide on a history project to assign, I decided to make it open ended and allow the kids to come up with their own project. I gave them a few simple instructions. 1. They had to include Chloe this time, who was only 5 at the time. 2. Whatever they chose to do, they had to show me that they understood and knew about the Colonial time period. 3. They needed to finish the project by a certain date.

As the time grew closer for the presentation, I began to research what Colonial Americans typically ate, and planned a menu for the "Colonial feast" we agreed to have along with the revealing of their project. I began to worry about the kids keeping their end of the bargain for several reasons. While they were disappearing into the back bedroom frequently and shutting the door, I never could find evidence of anything "project-like". They never took paper from the art cabinet. No markers went missing. Pencils and pens stayed in the pencil holder. No one ever asked for construction paper, glue, or even tape! Tape normally gets used like water around here when a project is in the works. To top if off, they had not asked me to buy them a sheet of poster board. I just knew the project would involve a poster! What else could they be doing?!

Well, I decided that maybe my kids just weren't doing anything! They just needed some encouragement or maybe a little help from mom. So, I asked them, "Are you working on your Colonial time period project." They replied, "Oh, yeah. We are." "Mmmm.... okay", I thought. Another week went by and still no signs of a project appeared. "I need to reiterate my expectations and make sure they understand everything the assignment", I thought. "Did you remember that Friday is the day we have our feast and your project is due?" I asked. "Yes, we know, Mom." "And, you remember that you have to involve Chloe in the project somehow?" "Yeah Mom, we know. Oh, and by the way, can you buy us a sheet of poster board?" Allison asked. Ah ha! I knew a poster would be involved in this! I knew now that this project was going to be a last minute effort, so I prepared myself for that speech about how one can do so much more when one just applies oneself. And then, I waited until Friday.

By the time Friday arrived, Kyle and I both were a little worried. What in the world had they been doing with their time for the last 6 weeks? We enjoyed a delicious meal, but I can't honestly remember now what we ate, except for the Colonial cookies that I made. I had found the recipe on-line, and they were really tasty. After dinner, out came the poster! But this poster only advertised the upcoming entertainment. And entertained we were!

Movie!
"A Walk Through Time"

Rated C for Colonial

Chloe's involvement consisted of dressing like a pilgrim, passing out popcorn, and introducing the movie. Allison then proceeded to plug in the video camcorder to the TV and play the contents. We learned a little about William Penn, Squanto, Quakers, colonization, and several other aspects of American life between 1600 and 1700. Grant played an American boy living in the 21st century who stumbled upon a time machine. When he inadvertently pushed some buttons, the time machine transported him to Colonial America where he met various people and learned about the times. The movie lasted about 20 minutes. In those 20 minutes, Kyle and I laughed more than we had in a long time. In fact, we laughed so hard, that we had to rewatch the movie just to catch the parts we missed the first time from our laughing. The kids accomplished two things: 1. They highly entertained us. 2. They let us know that they knew about the Colonial time period.

You can see a portion of "A Walk Through Time Part I" here. Although I must warn you, they don't like to talk about their first movie now. They have improved their skills immensely since those days. They won't even subject themselves to viewing it anymore!

After we finished watching their movie, Kyle showed them how they could take what they had filmed, and load it onto a computer where they could then edit the footage. "You can edit it on the computer?" Allison asked. Whenever they would make a mistake, they would rewind the video tape and retape the scene. An interest in movie making was born that night in Allison. She learned how to load film, edit, and add music to her video. Over the next few months, she made several short films to try out her newly found skills. And that led to the second movie they made that school year entitled, "A Walk Through Time Part II.

I no longer assign history projects for school. I guess when Allison starts college, I will need to rethink adding them back into our curricula for history, but for now, no more motivation is necessary. They love history, and they love to make movies about it!

In future posts, I hope to write about how they have improved their skills, and how this movie making thing has snowballed at our house. Stay tuned!

Oh! And, by the way, they all got an A+ on their history project. ;)