Up, Up, and Away Learning Experiences

This week we turn to the world of superheroes! If you read my Learning with a Twist FAQs last week, then you know I teased about what this week’s movie was going to be. I thought superheroes would be fun! I was thinking about doing the movie Sky High, a superhero school movie featuring Kurt Russell and the late Kelly Preston as the super parents. Such a fun movie. But a couple of weeks ago when I was perusing Disney+ for movie ideas, I stumbled upon the category of “Celebrate Black Stories”. It was here that I found the movie Up, Up, and Away and it piqued my interest. I felt compelled to do a learning experience based on a film featuring people of color in main roles because representation matters. Up, Up, and Away was made in 2000 and is an Original Disney Channel movie. It’s a little cheesy, but my girls loved it and we had a great time doing the activities along with it.

Here are the supplies you’ll need for this week:

-aluminum foil

-construction paper and scissors

-ingredients to make zucchini bread

-pencils, crayons, colored pencils, markers, tape

The Hook: What Are Superheroes?

For most kids, this should be an easy one! Many kids can name lots of superheroes. My daughters didn’t know too many, but they did talk about Spiderman, Spider Girl, and Batman. We talked about how superheroes have powers. I asked them what powers they would have if they had superpowers. I asked, “what would it be like to be in a family full of superheroes?”

Now, you’re ready to watch the movie “Up, Up, and Away!”

Create Your Own Superhero Logo and Catchphrase

For our first activity we created our very own logo. We looked at examples online using Google Images. I asked the girls which logos they recognized. They knew Superman, Supergirl, Batman, and Spiderman. We talked about how Superheroes had catchphrases. For dad, the Bronze Eagle, it was “Up, Up, and Away!” For The Flash it's “The Fastest Man Alive”. For Superman he’s “The Man of Steel” who is also “faster than a speeding bullet” and “more powerful than a locomotive”. The girls then thought and designed their own. Here’s what they came up with:

My four year old is really into JoJo Siwa. So, not surprisingly, she decided to be a JoJo Siwa superhero that turns everything into rainbows. She did the drawing and my 7 year old wrote the words for her. Her catchphrase is “The most beautiful thing is the rainbow.” Enough said.

My 7 year old came up with “Jungle Woman” and the phrase “The Jungle is My Bungle” because it was the only word that she could think of to rhyme with Jungle. And no, she’s never even heard of Jethro Tull’s “Bungle in the Jungle”. Note: she wrote Jungle with a G. I didn't correct her today. Later in the week, when talking about words, we talked about the difference between "G” and “J”. She told me that “Gungle” was one of the times when the G made a J sound. I asked her if she was sure about that and we looked the word up. So now she does now that Jungle starts with a J. As I noted in my FAQ article last week, you don’t have to worry so much about spelling. That’ll come later. For us, we talked about it a different day. That way she enjoyed the activity without becoming frustrated about making it perfect, and she also now knows the correct way to spell “jungle”. Win-Win!

If You Were a Superhero, What Would Be Your Super Power?

Now that they’ve created their own Superhero logos and catch-phrases, it’s time to decide what their powers will be. Tell them to imagine that they are the superheroes they created. What are their powers? How do they catch the bad guys? Have them write about it. Here is what my 7 year old came up with:

Imagine you’re a supervillain. What would you make out of aluminum foil to weaken your superhero enemies?

This is one of those activities that started out rocky, but ended well. This was the activity I teased about in last week’s FAQ article. Since the superheroes in this movie have aluminum foil as their kryptonite (spoiler alert), we decided to use aluminum foil as a sculpture medium to make items to “trick” the superheroes. My older daughter decided to make a mask. She thought she could trick the superheroes when they went to put on their masks, put on the aluminum foil one instead, and then it would drain their powers. It was a great idea in theory, but not so much in practice.

Aluminum foil is not a great medium for drawing and cutting, and that’s what she wanted to do. She made one, but she cried when it ripped, so we taped it. At this point, I had the choice to scrap the activity or try using aluminum foil another way. Normally I would also consider using another medium (like clay or paint) but I wanted to stick with aluminum foil since it was an integral part of the movie. So my daughter and I chatted and decided to try using the aluminum foil by crumpling it up instead of drawing and cutting on it. My younger daughter made a “poison bottle” and my older one made a weight to trick the superheroes. This is a great lesson that sometimes activities don’t quite work out and it’s okay to scrap them and try something else, if that happens.

Create Your Own Superhero Comic!

This is a great activity for reluctant writers! It’s an opportunity to tell a story through drawing without having to use too many words. We talked about the origin of superheroes and comics. If you have some superhero comics at home, this is the perfect time to bust them out! We looked at some clips from the old Batman and Robin series from the 1960s that I found on Youtube and we noticed the comic style in which they put the “Pow!” and “Sock!” in the fight scenes, making it look like a comic book. I don’t have any superhero comic books, but my daughter has a few beginner comic books/graphic novels including The Babysitter’s Club by Ann Martin and turned into a graphic novel by Gale Galligan, Unicorn on a Roll by Dana Simpson, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton, I Lost a Tooth, and Don’t Let the Pigeon Take a Bath, both by by Mo Willems. We looked at the pages and noticed what they had in common; some parts showed just pictures, some had thought bubbles to show what the characters were thinking, others had talk bubbles. Then it was my daughters’ turn to make their own comic books.

When coming up with ideas, I encouraged my children to use the superhero they thought up in one of the the first activities. I also encouraged them to think of a problem that the superhero could solve. This would involve having a beginning, middle, and end to their story.

My 4 year old had her superhero, JoJo Siwa, in Candyland. In the first part Superhero JoJo is shaking a candy tree and orange candies are falling out of it (solving the problem of how to get the candy out of the tree). Then, in the second part, an airplane was flying into Candyland. My 4 year old “wrote” in the talk bubbles and told me what it said. She proudly hung it on the refrigerator when she was done.

My 7 year old made her Superhero save a cat that was stuck in a tree. Although there were built-in talk bubbles for her to use, she didn’t want to use them as talk bubbles. She instead used them as extra spaces and created her own talk bubbles.

I found these templates on teacherspayteachers.com. This is the one that I used, but there are many different templates on the site. All you have to do is create an account to download. Teacherspayteachers.com has so many great resources!

Baking Zucchini Bread

When the neighbors bought zucchini bread wrapped in aluminum foil to the superhero family both of my girls asked, “what is zucchini bread?” As fate would have it, I had some zucchini in my fridge! So we found a great recipe and made some! Here is the one we made. We decided to decrease the sugar level a bit and we made several mini loaves. If you want a healthier recipe that uses whole wheat flour instead, you can try this one.

My daughter had wanted to bake bread and take it to our neighbors for a while now, so we made mini loaves to deliver. She was also adamant about making our own boxes because she had seen Daniel Tiger (of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood) make his own boxes to deliver treats to the neighbors. So we used this video as a guide. Reminder: watch YouTube with your littles because you never know which ads may load or what videos may autoload after this one. In the video the gentleman uses the width of the ruler for his box. We needed it to be a little wider than that, so we used a ruler to measure how much we needed and made marks on the paper with a ruler. It’s good practice for measurement.

Writing a How-To Book: How To Make Zucchini Bread

Here is a great opportunity to write a How-To book! Your child can write how to make zucchini bread. This could be done in two ways. Either your child can write as you do each step, or they can write what they did afterward. This is what my older daughter did. It’s a little less involved (they don’t have to write every single ingredient) but still gives them practice writing step-by-step directions. Encourage your child to use words like “first”, “next”, “then”, “last”. My daughter did it all on one page. You could also make a little book where your children write one step on each page and also illustrate each page. This can be a draw for kids who really like making books.

As a third option, you could also create a recipe like we did for the Muppets Treasure Island Learning Experience. I found a free template from Teachers Pay Teachers. Your child could write the recipe as you do it together and then you have it for next time! If you add it to the Muppets Treasure Island one, you could start a recipe book!

Optical Illusions: What Do You See?

In the movie, the villain controls kids by hypnotizing them via a computer. My children had no idea what hypnotizing meant. I explained it to them and started thinking about optical illusions. I found some great websites with optical illusions for you to check out and talk about with your kids. This first one explores many of those pictures that you can see two ways. You may be familiar with some of them: the vase or the two faces? The old lady or the young lady? My daughter initially could only see the vase. When I showed her the two faces by outlining them with my cursor, she giggled and giggled. She couldn’t believe it! This next one has more of these, but also includes impossible objects and items that appear to move but don’t actually. My daughters were sure that some of these were moving, even though they weren’t! We really enjoyed looking at these optical illusions together.

If you are interested in talking more about hypnosis, I found this cute video on YouTube called “Kids Meet a Hypnotist” which was pretty cute. Insert YouTube viewing reminder here.

What is Your Superhero Superfood?

In the movie the superhero family eats absolutely everything spinach to keep up their strength. I asked my children what their superhero meal would look like. I cut large circles out of cardstock in the shape of plates. I traced a dinner plate and then cut it out. Then I put out construction paper, pencils, and markers for them to create their own meal on the plate. Note: if I had it to do again, I would’ve made the plates white. I was low on cardstock so I used the color that we had the most of. It worked well for my 7 year old because she decided to make food by cutting up construction paper. My 4 year old who lacks the motor skills to do that decided to draw. Her drawing would’ve shown up better if she had a white plate to work with.

Here is my four year old’s work. She included cucumbers, both whole and sliced, peppers, beans, and a knife. Later she used this plate with her dolls and had them pretend they were eating dinner.

Here is my seven year old’s plate:

She decided to make it 3-D by crumpling up some of the paper. She included a slice of watermelon, a strawberry, apple slices (those are the red strips with the white crumpled on top), an orange, some peas, and some beans.

Superhero Restaurant Menu: Which Superfoods Give You Which Superpowers?

After creating a meal, have your child create a menu. If you need ideas of what menus look like, there are tons of examples on Google Images. Have your child write (or draw) food items. Then they can include a description of what superpower they enhance and the cost.

My daughter made a “Souperhero” menu in which the restaurant featured soups. She came up with this pun all by herself! She had some creative superpowers- one food turned someone’s finger into a pencil so they could write with it. Why not?

Thank you so much for joining us for Superhero week! We had a great time watching Up, Up, and Away! See you next week!

~Nicole