A Love of Hobbits Leads to Geography and More
Ok, here's a little "how they actually manage to learn when they are just doing there own thing" post.
As some already know my children, especially Katie, are obsessed with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This all started back when Katie was three, I think, and we checked out the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Hobbit from the library. She loved it, so we dug out Matt's battered copy and offered to read it to her. We would flip throught the book to an exciting bit, and read ten minutes or so. We were never sure she got much out of that, but she kept asking for more. Eventually I found an edition with really well done, large full-color illustrations by Michael Hague and ordered it from Half.com. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of that item! I think we have read it all the way through only once, but still we often read a bit here and a bit there.
Over time the interest in the story has waxed and waned. For awhile I thought The Hobbit phase was over. Then Katie ran across the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Return of the King at the library. I was skeptical, but we watched it, and it turned out to be a fairly good intro to the story of The Lord of the Rings. This started readings from the three LOTR books, and recently we embarked on a full reading for Katie.
Tom does not care for The Lord of the Rings, as we haven't yet found an illustrated edition. He likes to have a picture to look at while he listens. Or a map. One of Tom's favorite things about the Tolkien books are the maps in the front. He loves to sit with Mama or Daddy and look at and talk about the maps. We trace the journeys out, talk about individual places and even make up pretend travels. Well, Tom does most of the pretending. He just tells me where the dwarves, dragons and hobbits went.
After quite a lot of Middle Earth map discussions, I decided to print maps. There's a good one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth. I gave several copies to Katie and Tom to do with what they would. They traced out journeys on them, different colors for different characters. Katie even drew her own map and told us the story of Frodo's, Sam's, Pippin's and Merry's adventures with a visual aid!
All this interest in maps nudged Matt to pull out his poster-sized RuneQuest "Fantasy Map of Europe" and hang it on the living room wall. Now, the kids will ask Daddy to "talk about the map" and he will grab a yardstick and point to places in Europe and tell a little about them. "You guys have probably heard about Athens before because it is a very old and famouse city" he says, or something similar. "It was in a story" says Katie. "Um, yes, I'm sure you've heard some story that took place in Athens. We did read some stories about Hercules . . . " Katie pipes up "It was A Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Yes!" says both parents, some astonished.
Now Tom has asked for a map with pictures on it, so I have promised to put together a map of our town, with pictures of some of the important places we go - Grandma's, Grammie's, the library, WalMart. We've also decided we need a world map on the wall so when we read a story that takes place in a real place, we can point it out on the map.
All of this from picking up a cartoon video at the library one day!
As some already know my children, especially Katie, are obsessed with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This all started back when Katie was three, I think, and we checked out the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Hobbit from the library. She loved it, so we dug out Matt's battered copy and offered to read it to her. We would flip throught the book to an exciting bit, and read ten minutes or so. We were never sure she got much out of that, but she kept asking for more. Eventually I found an edition with really well done, large full-color illustrations by Michael Hague and ordered it from Half.com. We have definitely gotten our money's worth out of that item! I think we have read it all the way through only once, but still we often read a bit here and a bit there.
Over time the interest in the story has waxed and waned. For awhile I thought The Hobbit phase was over. Then Katie ran across the old Rankin and Bass cartoon of The Return of the King at the library. I was skeptical, but we watched it, and it turned out to be a fairly good intro to the story of The Lord of the Rings. This started readings from the three LOTR books, and recently we embarked on a full reading for Katie.
Tom does not care for The Lord of the Rings, as we haven't yet found an illustrated edition. He likes to have a picture to look at while he listens. Or a map. One of Tom's favorite things about the Tolkien books are the maps in the front. He loves to sit with Mama or Daddy and look at and talk about the maps. We trace the journeys out, talk about individual places and even make up pretend travels. Well, Tom does most of the pretending. He just tells me where the dwarves, dragons and hobbits went.
After quite a lot of Middle Earth map discussions, I decided to print maps. There's a good one at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth. I gave several copies to Katie and Tom to do with what they would. They traced out journeys on them, different colors for different characters. Katie even drew her own map and told us the story of Frodo's, Sam's, Pippin's and Merry's adventures with a visual aid!
All this interest in maps nudged Matt to pull out his poster-sized RuneQuest "Fantasy Map of Europe" and hang it on the living room wall. Now, the kids will ask Daddy to "talk about the map" and he will grab a yardstick and point to places in Europe and tell a little about them. "You guys have probably heard about Athens before because it is a very old and famouse city" he says, or something similar. "It was in a story" says Katie. "Um, yes, I'm sure you've heard some story that took place in Athens. We did read some stories about Hercules . . . " Katie pipes up "It was A Midsummer Night's Dream!" "Yes!" says both parents, some astonished.
Now Tom has asked for a map with pictures on it, so I have promised to put together a map of our town, with pictures of some of the important places we go - Grandma's, Grammie's, the library, WalMart. We've also decided we need a world map on the wall so when we read a story that takes place in a real place, we can point it out on the map.
All of this from picking up a cartoon video at the library one day!
posted by Cindy at 9:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home