youthworkblog.co.uk: Cheaper by the Dozen 2

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 - talk ideas

Chloe must have watched this film 10 times in the past two weeks! Here are some ideas for using this film:

Chapter 1 - Loraine graduates. Maybe we could use this for our "life after school" talk.
Chapter 7 and Chapter 12 - The children are upto some mischief...making trouble...
Chapter 10 - 11 (23 mins - 35 mins). You could use this to talk about rivalry. Basically the Bakers setup camp in sight of the Murtaugh's house. They then start trying to out sing each other. If you watch the film you see that main theme is the rivalry between Jimmy Murtaugh and Tom Baker. This is a good example of that.
Chapter 16 (52 mins - 1 hour 5 mins). You could use these scene for two issues. Firstly in Tom's quest to beat the Murtaugh's, the family start training for the big annual competition. So you could talk about training, preparation etc. Secondly, there's a good bit about dating...Sarah (who's a bit of a tom boy) is going on her first date and is putting on makeup, dressing up etc. Tom, the father, is struggling with the whole idea of this, so he follows them to the cinema to make sure they behave...he then makes a fool of himself. You could use the to talk about dating, your attitude towards it, what your parents think, preparation (how do you prepare yourself emotionally etc).
Chapter 20 (1 hour 17 mins - 1 hour 20 mins). It's the big completion. Again, you could use this to talk about rivalry, winning & losing. They other thing to note is that during the completion Nora starts giving birth. This causes the Baker "team" to re-evaluate their priorities. The film ends with the birth, and the Baker and Mirtaugh's are all good friends...so you could talk about priorities, making up etc.

You can read more about the film here