A History of Movies

Blaze has really been enjoying learning about great inventors. He has also found ways to relate to the people we've been learning about. When we were learning about Leonardo Da Vinci, Blaze was very excited to learn that Leonardo was left-handed, just like him. This week, we started learning about Thomas Edison, and when we got to the part of one of our books where it talked about Edison being homeschooled by his mother, Blaze shouted out, "Just like me!"

This week we read the following books:





The second book came with a kit to build a plastic kinetiscope (Edison's first way of showing motion pictures). DH and Blaze put it together, but it doesn't work very well.

A kinetiscope:


We have also been learning about early filmmaking by watching some of the first movies.



The First Motion Picture:



You Tube has several of the short kinetiscope films, which have been preserved by the Library of Congress. Blaze's favorite is the boxing cats:



By 1902, films had become long enough that they could tell stories.

A Trip to the moon, 1902, French:



The Great Train Robbery, 1903, American: