Another week of lockdown and I’m back with more ideas for you to try with your padawans.
Thank you to everyone for their support with (what is shaping up to be) this series. If this is your first time here, welcome! My aim is to provide activities that are both educational and fun to do, that are based around a galaxy far, far away!
I will be sounding like a broken record by now, but I will keep saying it. This is a guide for you to play with your child. You, the parent, are essential to this whole process, never forget that. Children learn so much by observing their parents, including how they go about doing and making things. They also take note of how you respond if something goes wrong. Do you simply give up, or do you try again?
So, without further ado, let’s crack on with the five activities for this week…
The first is from my fellow Jedi News team member Kat Rees-Jauke. During this whole endeavour, it is Kat who has been my rock, encouraging me to keep going and coming up with a range of activities to add to my list! This week is no different and Kat has come up with her own guide on how you can create your own Jawa decoration. Sewing is an important life skill that is taught in schools, so this is a great way to have your child practice at home! As well, this could be the start of your very own Star Wars themed Christmas tree. There’s nothing like starting early!
Simply click on the instructions below and either follow them on screen, or you can save the pictures or print them for yourself.
Inspired by Kat’s Jawa and one of last week’s ideas of growing your own plants. Why not create your own Jawa scarecrow! A few years ago, I saw someone using rods to create a very basic humanoid shape, then cut out a basic brown robe shape to cover it. With a couple of torches, they had a life size Jawa. It is very simple to do, and a bit of brown material sewn and cut works wonders. If you have some wood lying about the garden or in the shed, why not create your own scarecrow or even someone to stand in the porch of your house?
One of the areas in mathematics is shape. Within this, is the topic of nets of shape. Children leave to see how shapes are deconstructed and then try recreating it to form their own 3D shapes. This can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, there are plenty of templates online to find. I will say, the fascination my year sixes showed when I gave them a dodecahedron to construct was incredible! The look of concentration as they tried to line up the faces was amazing. Now, how to link this to Star Wars? Well, it’s not creating 3D shapes, it’s creating their own holocron! Have them design the faces with intricate colours and design before bringing the shape together. Holocrons come in all shapes and sizes, so whatever shape they decide to create will be fine. Make sure you talk through the names of the shapes, as well as how many faces, edges and vertices each shape has.
In the first article we published, I mentioned how you could do recipes as a form of writing for the padawans. I want to return to writing today as it’s so important for children to practice their skills. In Star Wars, there are lots of gaps in the movies that children could fill in with their own story. The one obvious one for me, is how do Han and Chewie get the rathtars onboard their ship in The Force Awakens. Your padawan could plan and then write how they caught them as well as what happened to the rest of the crew. They can make it as gruesome as they want, which is usually enough to get most children excited to write something. There are a whole host of these gaps. Some may have been filled in by books and comics, but if your child hasn’t read them, well you know what they say, ignorance is bliss!
The final activity for this week is to create your own commentary for an episode of The Clone Wars, Rebels or, if you’re feeling brave and chatty, the movies! I know when I’m watching anything with my three-year-old, she’ll start asking questions, wondering about things that she may not understand or making predictions. A lot of the time, we ask children to be quiet when watching something, but this allows the children to think out loud as they’re watching something. It makes the Star Wars franchise a catalyst for discussion. Even better if you want to record it and share it with us! The ideas that come out of their minds can sometimes be very surprising. With Disney+ now available for all, now seems the perfect time. My daughter and I are watching all the classics and it’s fascinating to see her make links between different movies and shows (“the cat with Minnie Mouse is from Pinocchio!”).
So, there we have it for another week! Thank you again for all your support and ideas, we hope they are helping you and your padawans to get through this difficult time. As always, we would leave to hear from you. If you have photos of what you’ve been doing, or suggestions then please join us on the Jedi News Network Twitter feed, as we seem to be getting quite a group of us there now!
Until next time, stay safe and may the force be with you…
