This was a textbook hero’s journey structure, just like the first one. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of old Greek myths and makes me wonder if the movie feels more European than Polynesian. I’m not familiar enough with Polynesian story structures to be the judge.
Score: 0.5
Characters
The expanded cast of heroes were a lot of fun. I loved that they chose to make the unabashed fan a man and the genius engineer a woman. They were all very entertaining but the little sister was pure adorable.
I appreciate how consistent the characters feel, which has not always been the case with Disney sequels.
Score: 1
Dialogue
Lots of great jokes and pop culture references. Maui follows Genie and Merlin in breaking the third wall in the most enjoyable ways. Also lots of little jokes relating to the first one.
Score: 1
Visuals and Music
The water animation looks more real then I ever thought possible, the characters are vibrant, and the choice of camera angles was fantastic.
I’d heard a lot of complaints about the music but it was wonderful. Built off the first really well and Maui’s new song was so much fun.
Score: 1
Fun
This was fun from the first frame to the last. Everything moved fast and was a feast for the eyes. The kids saw it in theatres and have been anxiously awaiting the Disney plus release to watch it with me. They loved it just as much the second time, and my 5yo asked for the Bluray so he can watch special features.
Score: 1
Overall
This follows the mythic structure of the first movie while adding some amazing characters to keep it fresh. The music lives up to the first and the animation levelled up in the best ways.
Week 3 went quite smoothly with both virtual school and home school, minus a weird hiccup with google classroom not giving a link to the actual class. The teacher was able to fix it up quite quickly, though, so barely any time was lost. Dragon willingly spoke to the teacher several times during the day, which was great.
Dance
I kind lost track of how many times we did ballet this week. Essentially, I do this whenever she stops sitting still, so more often on some days than others.
Music
No piano learning yet (my mom has said she will teach her, but my mom is very busy with her own life right now, so this might take a bit of time). We listened to a bunch of French music. Coeur de Pirate was the favourite yet again and I am thrilled because it is a beautiful album.
Crochet
We managed to get a few more stitches in on Friday. This is definitely the category we do the least, as it involves me not crocheting on my own project in order to help her with her own.
Basic Information
We have played with the days of the week and have finished cutting out the months of the year. We’re storing each of them in their own separate envelopes (French and English together).
Printing words
Note to self, try to avoid words that involve combo letters. I felt like coeur was an important word to learn, though, so I kept it in for this week.
Words
More words!
Counting objects/math-type activities
Her numbers have really improved in the few short weeks since we started doing this. I’m so impressed and love seeing the progress!
Counting
Writing numbers without looking!
Draw x number of coconuts on a palm tree – this was cute and fun. We used the image from the above counting sheet in order to draw a palm tree, and then I had her put a certain number of coconuts in the tree and a certain number on the ground and then had her count them.
3 coconuts in a tree + 5 coconuts on the “ground” = 8. Sorry about the printing in the background – we’re reusing old dot matrix paper.
Count and talk a bit about the planets (before going star gazing!) – I printed out planet worksheets for her to colour and count (and then explained about Pluto not being a planet). Sorry I didn’t include the link for the one image – I couldn’t find it again! 🙁 She’s getting better at remembering the name for 5, but still needs practice for that and for 7 (in French, she has no trouble in English).
Planets!!!
Storytime
One of the books that were gifted to us was an under the sea create your own book. Dragon made the octopus one this week.
Colouring
More colouring
Putting it together
THreading it through
I made a book!
Activity
Star gazing – We went out on Monday night to use my old telescope (my dad came to help, thank goodness! My telescope is very beat up and hard to use). We started by looking at the moon, to give Dragon a chance to figure out how to look through the telescope (genius idea of my dad’s). She got VERY excited when she finally figured it out. I got a picture of the moon through the telescope lens! Then we shifted it over to look at the incredibly bright Jupiter, and were able to see 3 of it’s moons as well! I also got a shot of Jupiter through the telescope, although it just looks like a bright spot. Dragon says she saw it, but I’m not sure she did… And then we shifted over to see Saturn, and WOW! At first it just looked blurry, but then I pulled my head back a tiny bit and BAM! I saw it’s rings! No picture, sadly, because we lost it and couldn’t find it again. But overall, I would call star gazing a success! I’m even considering ordering a new telescope – one that connects to my phone to make it easier to see what we’re trying to look at.
Grand-dad helping Dragon look through the telescope at the moon
OMG I see the moon!
The moon through the telescope (what!?)
Trying to find Jupiter
I think I see it?
Jupiter through the telescope
The moon through the telescope again
The moon through the telescope again (2)
Bake with coconut – cookies – Papa and Dragon made no-bake peanut butter and white chocolate balls. The coconut was put in the melted chocolate. Dragon learned how to melt chocolate properly, and was able to comminucate this to my mom and sister (video call for the latter) a day later. She also understood how many 1/4 cups are needed to make 1 cup and how many 1/5 cups are needed to make 1 cup. Pretty cool combining baking and math!
Melted chocolate!
Taste test
My cookies!
Yum!
So yummy!
Chocolate-y hand!
Objects floating in water – we had a lot of fun gathering the objects, guessing at whether they would float or sink, and dropping them in the water. Then she cut and glued them onto the page…she was very excited when she realized that the objects on the paper were the same as the objects she had dropped into the water earlier that day.
Will it sink or float?
Will it float or sink?
Pushing the floating object around in the sink.
Cut and paste
All glued on! (The duplo sank, but it was supposed to float…?)
This week is Moana, the 2016 film by Disney. I thought it would be nice to be able to go star-gazing when it’s not too cold but gets dark a little bit earlier. And this week has great viewing opportunities for Jupiter and Saturn at the beginning of the week (Mon-Wed).
Singing, listening to different pieces, learning piano
Crochet
The project she is working on (currently she is making herself a poncho)
Basic Information
We talk about the days of the week and play games with the cutouts of the names. We do the same thing with the names of the months of the year. You can find the print-outs here.
Printing words
Downloadable materials
Counting objects/math-type activities
Practice counting objects and writing how many of each type – in downloadable materials
Star gazing – Best days to view Jupiter and Saturn this week are Mon-Wed 2020 (just check weather first!) During the day – talk about the two planets and what to expect while observing them – add in some planet worksheets for colouring (web link, web link)
Bake with coconut – cookies? Any option you like
Objects floating in water (experiment link, printable worksheet in downloadable materials)
Movies can be amazing or absolutely horrible. Below is the list of movies that came out this year that I saw and how I rank them. As usual, there are a lot more that I want to see.
My rankings are a combination of how much I liked the movie and if I’d be willing to rewatch it.
Kubo and the Two Strings (A by-the-numbers Hero’s Journey that hits every note perfectly. The music was fantastic. The only reason it isn’t higher is the awkward pseudo-Japanese flavour that rings a little false without any main characters, writers, or directors being from the culture.)
Ghostbusters (I really enjoyed this. So much so I saw it twice. I like it better then the original.)
Star Trek Beyond (Best of the trilogy and the one that felt most like Star Trek.)
The Jungle Book (Way better than the animated one with one of the best performances I’ve seen.)
Hail, Caesar! (Loved this movie but I wish I had a list of movies it was referencing so I could get all the jokes.)
Captain America: Civil War (This was fun, but for a movie called Captain America, it had very little Captain America. There’s a reason people call it Avengers 2.5)
Doctor Strange (A solid Marvel origin story for another white, snarky, male hero. But let’s be honest, we’ve seen this movie before.)
Rogue One (This was an okay movie but wasn’t all that good. Mostly just meh)
X-Men: Apocalypse (So much money spent on big battles. I find I don’t really care about these movies anymore.)
