Family movie night: lighthouse theme

We a fun family movie night on Friday night that was inspired by our lighthouse unit study.  One of the recommended movies for a lighthouse unit theme was Captain January with Shirley Temple.  I put it on our Netflix DVD queue just thinking it would be fun to have the kids experience a Shirley Temple movie, but ended up making a whole fun night out of it.

I used to love Shirley Temple's movie "The Little Princess" when I was a little girl.  I had never seen this one (Captain January) before, but from the synopsis it sounded like a good family movie.  It was pretty good for a family night, and I'm glad we have these old classics to show to our children.  Although my little boys were getting kind of bored about halfway through, we all enjoyed the songs and silliness throughout the movie. 

Before the movie we had dinner of Fish and chips.  We don't eat any seafood in our house, so this was only about the 2nd time I've tried introducing the kids to fish (the breaded and fried kind).  Hubby and I will do fish and chips once in a while, but the kids are a different story.  So I gave them each 1 fish stick, and told them to at least try the whole thing before they decided.  2 out of the 4 ate their whole stick, and I think 1 of those 2 will want that dinner again.  Sometimes I wish we liked seafood more, maybe someday!  Maybe we should try something fresh sometime :-)

Anyway, after that we started the movie...

Here is a shot from our TV as we were watching it.  We were excited that it had a color option.  It was originally in black and white.

 

The movie treat...

We worked on our lighthouse cake on Friday afternoon so it would be ready for our movie night.  It came out pretty good.  I'm not the best in the cake department, but I was glad this came together.  The kids loved helping too.  Aric helped me mix the cake mix.  Aaron helped me pick the candies for the outside, and come up with ideas for decorating.  He also crumbled up the "rock" for the base of the lighthouse.  

Oh, and in case anybody is looking to make a lighthouse cake, I made this one with two round 9" cakes on the bottom.  Then for the lighthouse tower I stacked large cupcakes (not regular size), and put 3 skewers down them for stability.

The shells and sea stars are made from melted chocolate.  I found the mold at Michael's craft store just that day.

Then about halfway through the movie we cut the cake and enjoyed it during the rest of the  movie!  It was very sweet.  We only ate the lighthouse then.  We still have the ocean to eat another day :-)

The next day April told me that she liked our "sea" themed movie night.  I think we might do this kind of thing more often!

 Desiree