Pop some popcorn for a Stuart Little movie night

As I design my kids assigned reading books for our homeschool reading lessons I usually look at the books I was required to read as a kid.  I’ll throw out any books I found especially horrid (Great Expectations) and add in a few that were my favorites, but weren’t required (Peter Pan).  Stuart Little fell somewhere in the middle.  I remember reading it as a kid and finding the idea of a mouse hilarious.

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Stuart Little

Stuart Little* is a young mouse born to a human family.  Follow his adventures as he learns how to get along as a very small person in a very big world.  Completely unrelated to this very brief plot synopsis of Stuart Little, but this is the same cover of the book I read in 3rd grade.  That makes me happy.

 

Stuart Little assignment

One of the challenges they talk a lot about in the Stuart Little* is adapting the house to his small stature.  While wandering around Pinterest I found the most adorable mouse doll, I made up 3 of them as a surprise for the kids, and then gave them the assignment of creating a house for Stuart Little.  The kids all took to this like ducks to water, and created some great houses for him, complete with playgrounds and furniture.

They also had fun turning their Stuart Little dolls into spies.  It was quite hilarious.

The book Stuart Little also doesn’t particularly have an ending, it’s more of “and here’s where our story ends,” so we did some talking about other adventures Stuart might have had after the book ended as we discussed it all.

 

Stuart Little movie* snacks

Our snacks were somewhat more exotic this time around.  We had Stuart’s sailboat and his little car.  I made some Stuart mice similar to my Despereaux mice.  Then we made a giant hammer tool for Stuart to use in his various projects.  Since I used cheese for sails I opted not to have some sliced cheese, and instead had cheese-its for our final snack.

And while the Stuart Little movie I’m linking to has all 3 movies (I didn’t even know there were 3 movies), we only watched the first movie because that was quite enough, we were rather disappointed when the movie strayed so far from the book with an odd kidnapping and search for parents plot was added.  Of course I did hear the cry from Princess, “At least it wasn’t Bunnicula,” which years later is still held up as the worst movie ever.

I guess, I should change the title, because we didn’t end up popping any popcorn for our Stuart Little movie night.

 

More 3rd grade books to read and watch

After going through all of the books and a movies we’ve read/watched, most fall into 4th grade, but here’s the few I have:

Ramona– who doesn’t love her books, and the movie is just as adorable

Because of Winn-Dixie– one of my favorites, but then I love Kate DiCamillo

If you want some more ideas, check out my Book and Activity board

 

Then head over to iHomeschool Network’s a Movie and a Big Idea