Movie reports are a great idea. Try one.
Just as there’s a place for book reports, periodically there’s a place for movie reports for your children. These can be a great sidekick to your film study. A particular part of the movie, whether that be a character, a scene, the use of music in a scene (or the whole movie), or whatever you focused on, saw and discussed, can be put into a movie report.
My personal favorites of this type of report are the book-to-movie and movie-to-movie comparisons. With the book-to-movie report, I really enjoy reading a book with my children and then watching the movie. (Note: We don’t reverse the order, watching the movie first and then reading the book, as it is very hard to use one’s own imagination when reading the book if you have someone else’s interpretation of the book in your mind while you read it.) We always have a conversation after the movie as to similarities and differences between the two, preferences and comments. It just makes sense to write up a comparison between them.
Here’s a list of some books we’ve read and then watched the movie:
- Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- How To Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
- Swiss Family Robinson by Johan David Wyss
- The Whipping Boy by Sid Felischman (movie is called Prince Brat & The Whipping Boy)
- The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (and others in the series)
- Mr Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater
- To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Polyanna by Anna Sewell
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
- Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Cooper
- Heidi by Joanna Spyri
I also enjoy doing comparisons between the older and newer versions of the same movie. It’s always interesting seeing children’s perspectives and ideas in their writings. Here are some movie to movie comparisons we have done:
- Romeo & Juliet vs Gnomeo & Juliet
- Charlotte’s Web
- Heidi (There have been several versions of this lovely book)
All these comparisons get children to begin the process of thinking critically, objectively, subjectively, and offer opportunities of conversation and learning.
Did I miss any of your favorites? Please let me know if I have.
