Walt Disney - The Man

We are reading Walt Disney: Young Movie Maker by Marie Hammontree. We're finding that Walt led a very interesting childhood.

We learned about railroad talk! Did you know, for example, that a lunch box was called a "bait can," or that when you pulled the whistle you were "pulling the pig's tail?" We watched part of the video All About Trains for Kids and they had some fun railroad lingo on there, followed by a cute song to drive it home.

Walt's dad told him that in the middle ages, people played games like catch the greased pig- so we greased up a football and had our own fun! I got the idea here. He also told him that pigs are the smartest animals on the farm. We read more about them on PBS.com. They mention a pig IQ test on there, and I would have loved to have watched that episode and seen what that was all about, but I guess we've missed it.

Sometimes, Walt had issues with his father, just as DS#1 sometimes does- but he was never disrespectful or disobedient. I think it was good for DS#1 to see that other fathers and sons sometimes have problems and a good example of how to deal with them.

We found out his dad had diphtheria, so we studied this and some other infectious diseases at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's website for kids: BAM (Body and Mind). We took a little poll and learned that the kids have not had nearly as many infectious diseases as we parents and grandparents- primarily due to vaccines. This was good, because DS#1 recently had to get a tetanus booster after he cut his hand, so -even though I explained it then- this helped to cement it into his mind that it was for his own good that we subjected him to yet another shot...

Walt joined the Red Cross during World War I, because he was too young to enlist in the Army or Navy. We studied a little bit about WWI and found these models of the Sopwith Camel and the Red Baron to print and build. WOW! Were these ever a challenge!!! DS#2 showed some serious perseverance! They came out really cool looking and I think I will hang them up in our classroom to remind us of WWI.

For WWII, we tried a different set of planes. The first one, we found in Great World War II Projects You Can Build Yourself. This one (the green one) proved to be quite simple and even DS#1 built his w/no help and no "giving up" attitude. The second one to the right proved to be quite difficult, even for DS#2's patience, and after he cut it out, I did most of the putting together. I think it would be OK for an older child, but it was a little too much for a 7 year old. In any case, we found plenty of WWII paper aircrafts to print and build at Fly'n Things. Disney wasn't in the military for WWII, but he helped in other ways, we learned. He produced cartoons and other educational materials for soldiers and civilians alike- from teaching them how to use equipment to telling them how important it was to pay taxes and grow their own food.

Finally, we made a visit to the One Man's Dream exhibit at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Here, many of the things we read about were backed up with photographs and examples of Mr. Disney's dreams, failures and successes. The film at the end of the exhibit is primarily done in Mr. Disney's own words, and I like how he says that every young person should experience at least one good failure. It's something to think about...

While planning this study, a friend told me about the Carole Marsh Mystery books. She has one written about Disney! The Mystery at Disney World was a fun book to read with the kids. Even my 4 y/o dd was glued to my side to hear what would happen next. It was fun reading about places we've been and being able to easily picture where the kids in the book were at a given moment, but Carole Marsh does such a great job describing everything, that I think you would be able to do that even if you'd never been to Walt Disney World. I used the Teacher's Guide to help guide our discussions and she had some fantastic reading response ideas in there- I had the boys choose one on their own and I will post their results when they're finished :o)