If a fountain has a “No Wading” sign posted but your friends are playing in the water anyway, would you join them? What if one of your friends fell and needed help? Explain.
New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.
Archive for June, 2017
Movie Wednesday: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Swallow Falls is a tiny island in the Atlantic Ocean where everyone makes their living by fishing for sardines. But when the world stops eating sardines, the future looks set to be grey and tasteless.
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But Swallow Falls is also home to one of the world’s most original inventors, Flint Lockwood. Flint’s latest invention can turn water into food, and it might just save the town’s economy and make it world famous… or possibly destroy civilization with enormous meatballs and spaghetti tornadoes! Now it’s up to Flint, Steve the Monkey, and weather reporter Sam Sparks, to save the world from the first ever food storm!
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a fun, colorful film about big ideas and never giving up. Give it a go!
Discussion Questions
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is based on a picture book of the same name. If you’ve read it, how do you think the film compares?
- Would you want to live somewhere where it rained food? Why or why not?
- Which characters change throughout the film and which ones stay the same? Share examples.
- Ultimately, did Flint help Swallow Falls or just give it more problems? Explain your answer.
- What do you think is the overall “message” of the film? It’s OK to be geeky? Follow your dreams? Too much junk food can kill? Something else?
Additional Resources
Family Breakfast Party – How to make a Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs themed breakfast.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs picture book – Check out the story that started it all.
Story Switcheroo: Final Projects
by Brave Writer instructor, Jen Holman
The new Brave Writer classroom design got to SHINE this spring with Story Switcheroo! While in the past, parents had to describe their kids’ creative endeavors and artwork, or include a clunky attachment, this session they got to include their pictures directly into their posts. It was a huge game-changer!
Here are some of the final projects:
A day in the life of Beast, from Beauty and the Beast. Here the characters from the castle (the coat stand, the clock, etc.) are all trying to make Beast presentable to impress Belle. But he keeps spilling soup on himself, etc. much to their dismay. Belle comes in at the end and sets him straight and tidy.
“Warning: Do not go in the Beast room ever”
A day in the life of Beast, by the younger sibling of the previous poster. Beast is trying to win Belle’s heart by performing magic tricks for her.
“8:00 Do whatever he wants.” lol
The bad witch climbing up Rapunzel’s hair to get into the tower. This student had made the tower, complete with little acorn bowls, cardboard chairs and tables, even artwork on the walls!
The characters of Moana (Maui, Moana and Heyhey) go for a picnic on the island after saving the day on their adventure.
A Cinderella ballroom scene. Note the chandelier!
Character study of pig from the Three Little Pigs. 🙂
Story Switcheroo is a whimsical journey through the world of fairy tales! In this online class, we create a mixed-up land for your kids to explore. They stretch their imaginations and write original stories from the building blocks of traditional fairy tales. We combine story elements, lighthearted writing exercises and imaginative play to introduce your child to a whole new magical world – of writing!
Recommended for ages 5-8.
Friday Freewrite: Cold or Hot?
If you had to pick, which would you rather do:
- walk barefoot in the ice and snow
- wear a heavy wool coat in the sweltering sun
Now write what that experience might be like!
New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.
Science-Themed Language Arts
Brave Writer’s mechanics and literature guides are digital products that feature copywork and dictation passages from specific read aloud novels. The guides are indispensable tools for parents who want to teach language arts in a natural, literature-bathed context.
Science-Themed
Dart (ages 8-10)
A girl. An iguana. An island. And e-mail. Meet Nim–a modern-day Robinson Crusoe! She can chop down bananas with a machete, climb tall palm trees, and start a fire with a piece of glass. So she’s not afraid when her scientist dad sails off to study plankton for three days, leaving her alone on their island. Besides, it’s not as if no one’s looking after her–she’s got a sea lion to mother her and an iguana for comic relief. She also has an interesting new e-mail pal. But when her father’s cell-phone calls stop coming and disaster seems near, Nim has to be stronger and braver than she’s ever been before. —Amazon
Arrow (ages 11-12)
Readers today are still fascinated by “Nat,” an eighteenth-century nautical wonder and mathematical wizard. Nathaniel Bowditch grew up in a sailor’s world—Salem in the early days, when tall-masted ships from foreign ports crowded the wharves. But Nat didn’t promise to have the makings of a sailor; he was too physically small. Nat may have been slight of build, but no one guessed that he had the persistence and determination to master sea navigation in the days when men sailed only by “log, lead, and lookout.” —Amazon
Galen and the History of Medicine
When Endemus recovered, suddenly people all over Rome wanted Galen to be their doctor…Galen gave lectures to explain his ideas…In one demonstration, Galen wanted to prove that speech came from the brain, not the heart, even though sound seems to come from the chest. —From the book
What if a boring lesson about the food chain becomes a sing-aloud celebration about predators and prey? A twinkle-twinkle little star transforms into a twinkle-less, sunshine-eating-and rhyming Black Hole? What if amoebas, combustion, metamorphosis, viruses, the creation of the universe are all irresistible, laugh-out-loud poetry? Well, you’re thinking in science verse, that’s what. And if you can’t stop the rhymes . . . the atomic joke is on you. Only the amazing talents of Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, the team who created Math Curse, could make science so much fun. —Amazon
Nature Study
