Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Lord of the Rings

We've spent the last 3 or 4 weeks reading The Fellowship of the Ring. We're only on page 220ish; it's slow going when you only read 30 to 45 minutes a night five nights a week.

Normally, we watch the movie version of our literature choices after we've finished the book. This time, I thought watching the movies would help the kids visualize what is happening in the book and help maintain interest for the long haul, since it's turning out to be one VERY long haul.

So, we watched the three movies, one per night, Sunday through Tuesday. We have the extended editions which make for some very long nights (The Return of the King is 4 hours 11 minutes long). By the last movie, we finally got smart and started at 4pm, which gave us enough time to take short breaks for getting dinner and dessert.



Here's the kids cuddled up with Scott watching The Return of the King. Josh was hamming it up for the camera, as you can see.


For most of the three movies, we allowed Josh to play Sesame Street computer games or watch a movie on the computer. It's in the adjacent room, separated by an 8 foot wide opening. We figured being in the same room with us would be too scary. What was somewhat humorous was the fact that, at times, the soundtrack was too scary for him to overhear. On several occasions, he came running out of the room crying "Har! Har!" (his word for scared) and into our arms for comfort. The final night, he found a comfortable spot on the coffee table at Scott's feet and started watching the movie. It only lasted a few moments as it was the scene with Shelob, the giant spider. It's one of the more intense scenes. It didn't take him long to cuddle into Scott's arms for comfort with a very concerned look on his face.

In case you might think I was insane for letting my 7 and 9 year old watch these intensely frightening movies, here's what the older kids thought:

Sam thought the movies were awesome. While he did jump on one occasion, he claims he didn't think they were scary. He thought the orcs and the urgals were "awesome!" Imaging a boy saying awesome with the enthusiasm of several exclamation points. He's definitely a boy!

Mika, who I was worried about, thought they were scary but not too scary. She found my many jumps and a few screams to be funny, especially since I've seen the movies four times now and should be prepared for what's coming. She didn't jump any where near as much as I did and she didn't scream once.

Now they both are into Lord of the Rings. We have the GameCube game, which is now getting much use by Sam. They both want to finish reading the books. They both want to watch all of the hours of special features on the discs as well.

Guess they liked it.

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