The Invention of Hugo Cabret Lesson

I do not home school my kiddos, I guess I fit into the catagory of moms who call themselves "after schoolers". I always have done fun activities with my children, but it was just within the last year or so when my daughter's reading level shot though the roof that she has gained an incredible thirst for knowledge.  At times she reminds me of the robot from Short Circut. "Input... Need more input!" So it is not necessarily by choice I find myself finding ways to fill her need for knowledge.

I actually love the fact she wants to learn more and more and I enjoy the creative challenge of finding creative ways to introduce new information to her.

She recently finished the book  "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" I read it as well so I was able to discuss it with her.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a book written by Brian Selznick. It mixes multiple pages of full page illustrations that beautifully tell a story all on their own with full pages of text mixed in between.

She enjoys biographies so the fact that the book had a real life character in the story plot was the key to her heart. She thought the story was ok but once she realized that Georges Melies was a real person she could learn more about she was super excited.

There were no books or children's biographies I could find on Melies so I had to resort to online information and sort though what I wanted her to see and what I didn't. We started with one of his famous early films.



I was ok with her watching the video of George Melies famous film "A trip to the Moon" The artwork from the the Hugo book portrays some images from this movie so she was excited to see it was an actual film. She thought it was pretty cheesy looking and it was a good lesson in what early films were like.

Yes being a child of the 80's, I was a teen in 1995 when the Smashing Pumpkins came out with the music video for their song "Tonight Tonight" which was inspired by Melies' "A Trip to the Moon"
I was always a fan of the song, and the strange video. Some people might not be comfortable showing this to their 6 year old child, but it really was fun to follow up Melies' film with the Smashing Pumpkins video. She  enjoyed pointing out the things that were the same in the two, She also spotted at the end that the boat that picks them up in the water is named the "S.S. Melies" something I never noticed or paid attention to before. She did state that the Moon was a bit on the "freaky" side, but the rest she didn't have issue with. I am such a sucker for alternative rock songs that use stings, and I enjoyed my trip down memory lane.





My daughter also enjoys sketching in her notebooks. She will bring a notebook with her places when she knows she will be bored and will pass the time drawing. One of the drawings she decided to do this week while we were out of the house at a restaurant was the image from "A Trip to The Moon" This is her own rendition of it. She went from memory and did not have the book or the movie to look at while she sketched. When she got the idea and started drawing that day she didn't tell me what she was drawing and I was not allowed to peek. Pretty good shading of the darker side of the moon. I am not quite sure where she learned how to do that, so I asked and she said she read about it in the book Judy Moody goes to College. It always amazes me what she picks up from reading.

I did come across this picture tutorial on how to draw an eyeball with pencil. I thought it was an amazing drawing tutorial and wanted to try it myself, but my 6 year old was a bit intimidated by it. I still wanted to include it since it is very similar to the illustrations in the Hugo book and some older students might be able to try it out.

Unfortunately I found this on an Asian website and it didn't have supporting links. I am sure you can search for Mark Crilley if you would like to find more of his drawing tutorials.

Next I found an "Interesting' video (Please preview the video without children being present.)

I found the video made by some college students very informative, just some of the ways they presented the information and the examples they used not suitable for children.

I was able to show my daughter the video from the beginning up until the end of the first example of how to do a stop motion edit. Yes there is an image of a guy lighting and smoking a cigarette, but I am not worried about that influencing her do smoke so I was ok with that image, the rest... not so much, but the information up to that point in the video is informative, entertaining for all viewers, and was enough to inspire her next project.

VIEWER BEWARE SOME CONTENT NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN



Georges Melies was the inventor of the stop motion edit. The film trick that makes it possible for objects to appear or disappear on the screen by stopping the recording process and changing something in the screen before starting the process again.

The video above did a good job explaining how to film a stop motion edit, so my daughter was ready to try it on her own making her very first stop motion edit video. Here is the video below. I hope you enjoy.



She really enjoyed learning about Melies, and stop motion edits.

Linking up here.