The Great Muppet Caper Learning Experiences
This week we switch gears and take a look at one of my favorite muppet movies (Muppet Christmas Carol will always be my favorite, not gonna lie) The Great Muppet Caper! There is so much good stuff in this movie to inspire many different learning activities and my kids had a blast doing them. It’s funny—as we move into our 5th Disney+ movie, my 7 year old is getting into the planning, too! After we watched the movie she asked, “Mom, are we going to make our own Muppets?” I responded with, “Why, yes we are!”. Then she asked, “Are we going to make our own jewelry?” I thought, “great idea!”. So, as you and your kids watch this movie together, don’t be afraid to follow their lead! If they are inspired by something in the movie and mention it, go for it! You never know where it might lead!
Supplies Needed For This Week:
-Paper, pencils, colored pencils
-Building materials (blocks, legos, Magna Tiles, etc.)
-Materials for puppets: small brown paper bags or old socks, crafting supplies (yarn, felt, googly eyes, ribbon, stickers, etc.)
-Acrylic paint and a canvas OR watercolor paints and paper
-Jewelry supplies (string, beads, charms, paper, sequins)
-Polymer clay, hook and eye pieces
The Hook: What Is a Reporter?
In this movie Kermit and Fozzie play twin investigative reporters with Gonzo tagging along as their photographer. There is a great running gag in the movie where Fozzie and Kermit can’t tell each other apart since they are twins. There is a great line where a girl walks by where the two muppets are sitting on a bench and exclaims, “Look, dad! A bear!” The dad then responds with, “No, that’s a frog”. Cracks me up every time!
In the age of social media and news on devices, your child may not be familiar with newspapers and news reports. This is a great time to talk about that with your child. If you have any newspapers, go through them and show your child what they look like, how the reporters have a byline on each article, and how the newspapers have different sections. This will help them to understand what Fozzie and Kermit’s jobs are in this movie.
Now that your children know what investigative reporters are, let’s watch The Great Muppet Caper!
Fashion Design: Design Your Own Clothing Line
I hope you loved that movie as much as I did! Since Lady Holiday is a fashion designer, this is a great opportunity for your child to design his or her own clothing line. I put out papers, pencils, and colored pencils and let my children design their own clothing. Both of my children decided on making clothes for dolls instead of actual people. My older one made clothes for LOL dolls, Stitch Fix style (or as she calls it, Sticks Fish) and my younger child designed clothing for Barbies.
Commercial Time! Why Should Consumers Buy the Clothes You Produce?
After creating their very own clothing lines, my daughters then wrote their own commercial scripts for why people should buy their line of clothing. We also talked about how they, as fashion designers, were producers and that the people buying these clothes were their consumers. After writing their commercials, your children can perform them for you while you record them on your phone. This is a great incentive for kids who may be hesitant to write. Tell them that if they write their commercials, they get to perform them and can watch them over and over again!
Happiness Hotel: Creating Your Own Hotel Blueprint
The happiness hotel number was probably one of my kids’ favorite (and mine!) parts of the movie. I put out a bunch of building materials (legos, blocks, magna tiles) and encouraged them to create their very own hotel. If your child likes drawing, you could also encourage a bird’s eye view drawing of a hotel using pencils. My younger child chose to make a castle hotel out of Magna Tiles while my older one made a hotel out of Legos. My younger one was done quickly and then joined in to help my older one. First of all they took about 45 minutes to build their lego hotel. Then they played lego hotel for at least another 45 minutes! They had a blast making the different parts and adding so many details.
Happiness Hotel: Write Your Own Hotel Review
After creating their own hotels, it’s now time to write a hotel review. We talked about how, as hotel owners, they are now providing a service. I asked my children why people should book a room in their hotels. My older one, having read book reviews that you can find on the back of a book cover, opted for writing short reviews from multiple people. She even made up names for the different people. If your child is a little older than my 7 year old you can encourage him or her to write a longer review, including how many stars the hotel receives. You can always look up some examples on Yelp for inspiration. With my younger one, she told me what people said about her hotel and I wrote it down. She said, “They have the best rooms ever in your life!”
Photography: Cameras That Are Not On Your Phone
My children were fasciated with the part where Gonzo, Kermit, and Fozzie are trying to develop pictures of the jewel thief that their camera captured. They didn’t know what film was because of this day and age with so many pictures being taken on phones! My daughter has a camera that takes mini Polaroids, but that is also an instant gratification type thing. She has no idea what it is like to have to wait until you take all of the pictures to develop the film. She was also really curious about the dark room the Muppets were using. I tried to find a good kids video on how a darkroom works, but I couldn’t find a very good one for kids. However I did find this simple video on how a camera works. As for developing film in a red room, I showed my children this one. It’s a look at a home-made dark room and, at just a little over 2 minutes, kept their attention. As always, make sure to watch YouTube with your children since you never know what ads may be shown or what videos may autoload. After watching the videos you can encourage your children to take some pictures of things that are interesting to them (whether you have a camera or use the one on your phone) and then have them look at them to see how well they captured the images.
Puppet Time! Create Your Own Puppet
We couldn’t watch a Muppet movie and miss the opportunity to create our own puppets! For this activity I gave my children small brown paper bags and a bunch of crafting supplies that I had on hand; pipe cleaner, googly eyes, felt, sequins. My older one created an owl and my younger one made Cinderella. If you don’t have small paper bags at home you could also make sock puppets out of old mismatched socks. We all have those—the ones you’re holding on to because you think you’ll find that other sock someday. Face it- it’s not going to happen! Might as well use it!
My children were really interested in ventriloquists after seeing Toy Story 4 (also on Disney+) and the ventriloquist dummy villains, so my girls practiced ventriloquism with their puppets, which was quite amusing. Your children could also make their own puppet show. If they are feeling ambitious, they could even write their own scripts!
As my oldest daughter was making her owl she asked the question, “Do owls have teeth?” We decided to look it up together. We read a bunch of interesting owl facts and found that no- owls do not have teeth. They use their beaks to smash up their food (in case you were wondering). So if at any time your child wonders something during one of these activities, go with it! Follow it and see where it leads.
Renoir!!! An Introduction to Impressionism
So you may wonder what on earth Renoir and Impressionism have to do with Muppets. Well, I’ll tell you. Blink and you may have missed it, but during the Happiness Hotel number, Kermit asked why the drummer (Animal) looks a little crazed and Zoot (from Dr. Teeth’s Electric Mayhem band) explains that Animal is upset because he missed the Rembrandt exhibit at the National Gallery, to which Animal shouts “Renoir!” and they start playing music. It’s a fun little joke for the adults and a springboard for a great art genre exploration.
Renoir was an Impressionist. I found a great video here that explains Impressionism to kids. Basically the Impressionists were a group of artists that broke off from the mainstream artists. Instead of painting very realistic-looking artworks with precise, thin lines, they used bold colors and broad brushstrokes to create an “impression” of what people saw when they looked at the nature around them. After watching the video you can show your child some artwork by Impressionists like Renoir, Monet, Manet, and Morisot. We have the Mini Masters board books with stories that go along with the pictures artists painted. We looked at the Monet one. If you’re interested, you can buy them on Amazon here. Impressionists painted outdoors, so encourage your child to paint outside! My daughter used acrylic painting and a white canvas that I got online at Michaels. You could also use watercolors and paper. Great subjects for Impressionist paintings include trees, beaches, flowers, a sunset, etc.
Stop The Presses! Write Your Own Newspaper Article
In “The Hook” we talked about what a reporter was and looked at a newspaper. Now here is your children’s chance to have their very own byline on a newspaper!
We started out by looking at a real newspaper and noticing the different sections. There were the big headlines, world news, local news, weather reports, comics, arts and leisure, etc. My older daughter picked a few different topics she was interested in and wrote about them. My younger one drew pictures. I used this free template from a great website called teacherspayteachers.com. They have such great resources! My daughters really enjoyed making their newspapers because they loved the format. It was something new and made writing feel like an exciting opportunity and not a chore.
There is room for pictures next to the articles. Your children can draw pictures or they could take pictures, print them out, and glue them on the paper. My daughter was out of her Polaroid film (I just ordered more but it hasn’t arrived yet) so she drew her pictures, but gluing Polaroids onto the paper is another great option.
Jewelry Shop- Make Your Own Jewelry Store
After having made her own clothing line, later in the week my daughter really wanted to make her own jewelry. She came up with that idea as soon as she watched the movie. Since Lady Holiday kept having her jewelry stolen, she also wanted to create her own fancy jewelry. This is a great opportunity to use up some of the old jewelry stuff you may have laying around (I had some leftover kits of strings and beads I wanted to use up). You can also get creative and make jewelry in other ways. We used paper for crowns and then glued little sequins on them. My older one used felt and sequins to make a ring and a bracelet. She also used hair clips and paper to make a headband and pipe cleaner and hair clips to make a hair bow. Use what you have- the sky’s the limit! After making some jewelry, your children can play Jewelry Store. They can set prices for their jewelry and, if your children are older, they can practice paying and making change.
If you want another fun jewelry making activity, buy some polymer (oven-baking) clay and some hook and eye pieces. I bought both of mine from Michaels online and I’m sure you can also get it on Amazon. My daughters made little charms out of the clay. They molded the shapes, we put glue on the tip of the hook and eye, and pushed it into the top of the charm, then baked it in the oven. Voila- jewelry your children can wear!
Well, that’s it for this week’s Disney+ learning experiences! I hope you enjoyed The Great Muppet Caper. See you soon!
~Nicole