i've been trying to wrap up what we did with sleeping beauty into a neat package, but it turns out, as all homeschoolers know, that learning is not quite that tidy. :D those DDP are insidious.
geography: where does aurora come from ("where is her land, mama?")? where is maleficent's land? where is the cottage? where are these places in relation to each other? what do you have to travel thru to get from place to place? we drew a map of the land as ella imagined it.
home ec: what skills do the three good fairies have to know or learn in order to live sucessfully as mortals? which of these skills does ella already know? which ones does she still need to learn? which ones can she figure out on her own and which ones does she need to be shown? what tools do we use now that the three good fairies didn't have? (you know which tool ella mentioned first? the same one that came to my mind first, our new cleaning BFF, the shark floor sweeper. wow, we truly love this thing).
math: we looked at a cake recipe from one of my cookbooks then tried to figure out how much more of each ingredient the fairies would have needed to make briar rose's birthday cake (the falling one--the one they made from scratch, without magic). this was a stretch for ella but she was totally up for trying, and in the end she got the idea of how multiplication works! for the record, to make a 14-layer yellow cake we figured they needed:
- 14 cups of flour
- 14 teaspoons of baking powder
- 3.5 teaspoons of salt
- 3.5 cups of butter
- 21 eggs
- 14 teaspoons of vanilla extract
- 5.25 cups of milk
for frosting they needed:
- 14 tablespoons milk
- 1.75 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 7 cups of confectioners sugar
and we figured baking two layers at a time it would take 3.5 hours to bake all 14 layers.
we also measured one of ella's dresses to find out how much fabric it took, then tried to figure out how much more the fairies used to make aurora's birthday gown. then we did the reverse, we tried to figure out how much fabric we'd need to make aurora's birthday gown in ella's size. my ulterior motive was that i wanted to make a dress for her to wear to the TN renn faire so i got her to help me do the hard part. (ella loved the dressmaking sequence in the movie, it totally cracked her up that merryweather cut a hole for the hem in the middle of the fabric). we believe it took 7 yards of fabric to make briar rose's pink/blue dress, and it would take 2.5 yards to make a dress for ella. (the dress we ended up with was not a duplicate of briar rose's--i was planning on it, but ella had design ideas of her own, and she has great design sense so i just do as she says).
science: we discussed the kinds of magic the fairies used to clean up the cottage and what principles of physics they broke (this was a little over both our heads, but we gave it our best shot and the internet was a big help). they broke every rule. just goes to show you that beings with magical powers have no respect for the laws of the universe.
architecture: ella invented a floor plan of the king's castle, maleficent's castle, and the woodcutter's cottage. she described the materials and the decor, and drew a picture of one room in each place that is not shown in the movie (king's castle: the king's bedroom; maleficent's castle: her living room; woodcutter's cottage: the three good fairies' bedroom).
quote to live by: "thou sword of truth, fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure." we used this for copywork, which she wrote in her own handwriting and then tried to write in "princess writing" (which is anything that has curliques).
timeline: (i don't know the academic subject this should belong to--please feel free to educate me!): we imagined briar rose's life between her christening and her 16th birthday, and then made a timeline showing the major events. i was so surprised at the things ella thought of--for example, when briar rose lost a tooth, she put it under her pillow and when she was asleep the tooth fairy came--she took the tooth, left a whistle under the pillow, and then had a snack with the three good fairies before she left.
there is so much more--things crop up all the time in this movie that inspire us in a direction of inquiry--but the main lesson in this unit was for ME, a lesson that i believe my friend eric booth would be pleased that i embraced this time in earnest: that there is real, deep, meaningful learning value even in something that at first glance seems completely jejune. my child's delight lead us on a journey that has not yet ended, and it is all because i finally welcomed the DDP into our world. i am thankful for them and for their presence in our lives.
it will be fall soon, and i don't know where our learning will lead us next, but i trust that ella will take us someplace magical.
