Superheroes, Part 3

We wrapped up our third week of our superhero theme.  My older son is totally hooked on all things superhero right now, so we've continued to carry on a few things in the week and half since then, but we are looser and not in a full-on theme for it now.  

In this week's activities, we were working on the "Incredible Love" portion of the How to Be a Superhero.  We only got two things done for this week with it.  One was making a little art project with a portion of the verse and the other was the heart garland she suggested, which was a little forced with my boys.  Isaiah still has it setting in his room, but it was a bit challenging getting him to connect to it much.  

 One of our biggest projects through this unit has been a Superhero Alphabet Book.  Before we started the unit, Isaiah actually requested to make it.  I had put up a transportation alphabet series of cards during our transportation unit, and Isaiah asked if we could make a superhero ABC book.  Of course, I wanted to jump on his suggestion for that!  Given that my knowledge of superheroes before this unit didn't extend far beyond Superman and Batman, I enlisted the help of my brother who loves comic books and collects them.  Within 24 hours of mentioning the idea to him in a message, he sent me a list of at least 2 for every single letter of the alphabet!  Could NOT have done this project without his help!  I wanted Isaiah to have some investment in making it, but I also wanted to keep the actual book assembly fairly simple so that we could do 2-3 letter per day and fit it within three weeks of the unit.  I started by printing out pictures of the characters and asked him if he wanted to cut and paste them on colored paper, but he just wanted to have me write the names of each superhero by the picture on that same page.  I realized (especially given that he likes to really observe and study how something is done before trying it much) how valuable it is for him to just see me write things, so I continued doing that each day for our pages.

So, each day, he would pull the pages for that day out of his tray (usually asking me within 10 minutes of waking up who our superheroes were for the day!), he would put a sticker of the letter on that page, I would write the name of the superhero by each picture, and then I would tell him about each one.  THAT was what took me a LOT of time!  Finding the images and compiling some info for each one!  I knew, though, that he wouldn't be satisfied with just the name.  After a few days, I realized he mainly just wanted to know what their "powers" were, so I focused on just gathering that specific info.  He is VERY proud of his superhero book!

 One particular aspect of his focus on superheroes that is particularly amusing is that he has created a superhero out of the Madagascar character Melman.  Could there be a more unlikely character to be a superhero?  Ha.  Anyway, he makes up a lot of stories about "Super Melman" and is determined to make a movie about him (which we haven't gotten to actually tackling yet), so I did a quick photo chop to include "Super Melman" in our book!

 Isaiah found a Superman game here at a department store awhile ago, and I had been meaning to pull it out to play during this unit.  It's the first time that I have sat down with both boys and attempted to play a focused board game.  I have to admit, it was a bit painful!  Zeke is obviously too young to follow the structure of it, which is fine, but it drives Isaiah (our fairness police) crazy that he doesn't follow the directions or rules.  Ironically, Isaiah then tries to bend the rules anytime he feels he is getting behind and not winning the game!  Not to mention, it just isn't that well done as a game!  Yeah, we're going to need to stick to playing just Isaiah and me or choosing other games or something.

 Isaiah had asked about drawing circles, and I remembered this prewriting page from Over the Big Moon's Superhero Pack and printed it out for him.

 Of course, Little Man wanted one, too!  :)

Isaiah really has enjoyed putting his "badges" on his superhero cape.  Here he is putting his on for "Incredible Love" and "Fantastic Conduct."

 A HUGE highlight for Isaiah was that a care package from Grandpa and Grandma arrived, in which Uncle Ben had sent him some comic books!  He has been absolutely glued to them!

 Isaiah is my man of big ideas.  He constantly has requests for things to make and projects to do, none of which he connects to the actual effort involved (afraid that is a bit of an inherited quality on top of the developmental understanding!).  I find myself often saying no just because the thought of the effort involved overwhelms me a bit or I get too wrapped up in my own agenda for our time, so I am trying to say yes to more of them and/or adapt them to a more realistic undertaking.  Last week he wanted to make Wonder Woman's magic lasso out of a tall piece of grass he found.  So, I decided to go for it and pull out some yellow paint and gold glitter and let him do it!  Sadly, as you would expect from a piece of grass, the end broke off the next day, which was quite emotional!  Did I mention he also gets very attached to his ideas and projects?!

Little Man has a lot less agenda for projects, which seems like it will probably stick that way, given his personality, but when someone pulls out glitter and paint, he just wants in on the action and has a grand old time enjoying the process!