Have you watched Luca yet???

It’s our new favorite Disney/Pixar movie! A movie full of wonderful lessons, the story is so sweet and the animation so beautiful you’ll wish it was longer!

And now you can take your kids on a Quest through Luca! 

For this Quest you will need:

• All printable worksheets (see below)
• Pencils
• Colored pencils or crayons
• Plain paper
• Green, white, red construction paper
• Tape or glue sticks
• Two dice
• Uno deck
• Acrylic Paint
• Apron (for painting, if you need)
• Celery
• Plastic bottle cut in half
• Bucket of water
• Silverware

Pre-Quest Prep:

The home-educator should read through the Quest in advance, to be sure he or she has everything necessary and to-hand. Print off all necessary worksheets, one per student, and prepare them as required.

Prep and place the activities around the room. Kids can complete the activities in any order. Each number and letter with corresponding activity is listed below.

In this Quest, kids will learn: math fact families, dice, addition, more than/less than, reading, geography, creative construction, foreign language, writing, opinion, punctuation, scientific observation, and drawing.

The Quest

Luca and Alberto learn a very important lesson. Everyone, even sea creatures, deserve this.

1 (E) — Seaweed Fact Families

Did you know the opposite sides of a six-sided die always add up to seven? I didn’t! But knowing this little fact can make for a super fun math game!

Cut the green construction paper into strips, or tear them to create a more natural look. (If your kids aren’t going to need seaweed to help them do math, you can skip this part.)

Roll a die and write down the number on a piece of paper. Then, using the seaweed, either have your children practice subtraction or addition. For example, if you roll a 3, have the kids write down 3 + x = 7 or 7 – 3 = x. Continue until you’ve collected all the fact families for 7.

Now add a second die. If the opposite sides of six-sided die always add up to seven, what about two dice? You got it: fourteen! Roll both dice and write down the sum of the two numbers. Then, using the seaweed, practice either subtraction or addition. For example, if you roll a 5 and a 1, have the kids write down 5 + 1 = 6. Now either find 6 + x = 14 or 14 – 6 = x. Continue until you’ve collected all the fact families for 14.

If you have older kids and one die or two are too simple, try it with more dice. Does it still work with three, four, five dice?

Discuss with your kids how knowledge of fact families can help you with math!

2 (N) — Sheep: Practicing the “sh” sound

Sort Luca’s fish-sheep according to the sounds they make! Print and cut out the images of the fish-sheep. Then print and fold Luca’s fish-sheep outside their cave.

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Have your kids sort the fish. Those fish that make a “sh” sound at the beginning or end of the word can join the other fish outside Luca’s cave.

While Bird was practicing the “sh” sound, I had Blue practice his spelling. She would call out the word—which helped her practice some sight word reading—and he’d spell it. 

3 (C) — Italy

Luca discovers he lives off the shore of the human country of Italy. Find Italy on a map. What does it look like? A boot!

The Italian flag is an easy one to make: simply cut a strip of green, white, and red paper and tape them together into a rectangle shape in that order.

Now, on the back of the flag, write down some facts about Italy. For example:

1. Capital: Rome
2. Language: Italian
3. Currency: Euro
4. Nickname: Bel Paese which means beautiful country
5. Rome was founded in 753 BC

4 (O) — Learn some Italian

Counting:

1. uno (oo-no)
2. due (doo-eh)
3. tre (treh)
4. quattro (kwah-troh)
5. cinque (cheen-kweh)
6. sei (say)
7. sette (seht-teh)
8. otto (oht-toh)
9. nove (noh-veh)
10. dieci (dee-eh-chee)

Colors:

1. red—rosso (roh-so)
2. yellow—giallo (jah-lo; g as in giraffe)
3. blue—blu or azzurro (ah-zorro)
4. green—verde (ver-day; same as Spanish)

We’ve found the best way to practice our numbers and colors in another language is to play Uno! Grab an Uno deck and play to practice. 

If you don’t own an Uno deck, you can pick one up for super cheap, or for now, just practice the numbers and colors with your kids! 

Molto bene (means good job)!

5 (U) — Silenzio Bruno

Alberto tells Luca to say, “Silenzio Bruno” to the voice in his head telling him he can’t do something. Don’t we all need a friend who offers that kind of encouragement? 

The period isn’t a friend, but it offers the same kind of advice to a sentence: stop. An exclamation point says it loudly and a question mark asks it. 

Ask your kids if the meaning of a sentence would change if the punctuation was different at the end. “Quiet, please.” vs “Quiet, please!” vs “Quiet, please?” have very different meanings. 

Try this with these quotes from Luca. Does the meaning change?

1. “Silenzio Bruno!”
2. “Walking is just like swimming… To start, stack everything one on top of the other. Like a pile of rocks.”
3. “Take me gravity!”
4. “We underdogs have to look out for each other.”
5. “My life’s great, I’m just looking out for him.”
6. “The universe is literally yours.”
7. “Just remember we are always here for you.”
8. “Look me in the eye. You know I love you, right?”
9. “We can go anywhere, do anything. We just gotta stick together.”
10. “There’s a million things you think you can’t do. All you need is a chance to try.”

6 (R) — Vespa

“Vespa is freedom.… You just sit on it and it takes you wherever you want to go…in the whole stinkin’ world.”

If you had a Vespa, where would you go? Write a paragraph explaining where, why, and what you’d do there.

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7 (A) — Sound Under Water

Do this quick and easy sound experiment to help your kids learn about how sound travels underwater.

Fill a bucket or sink with water. Grab two metal items, like pieces of silverware or chopsticks. Hit them together above the water. Is the sound loud or soft?

Now, submerge the half of a plastic bottle in the water with the nozzle open to the air. Put your ear to the nozzle and plug your other ear so you can only hear under the water. Hit the silverware together under the water (you might have to take turns being the one to listen vs being the one to hit two things together). Is the sound louder or softer than it was outside the water? What if you drop something into the water while you’re listening: is the sound loud or soft?

Why is the sound louder in the water? Think of marine animals that use echolocation—this is because sound waves travel faster through water. Why? Because water is denser than air. The water particles are packed more densely, so the energy moves faster, making the sound louder. 

A few fun facts from Scientific American:

1. “Sounds is a wave created by vibrations. These vibrations create areas of more and less densely packed particles. So sound needs a medium to travel, such as air, water—or even solids.”
2. “There are about 800 times more particles in a bottle of water than there are in the same bottle filled with air.”
3. “In freshwater at room temperature…sound travels about 4.3 times faster than it does in air at the same temperature.” 

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8 (G) — Fish Scales

Have you ever noticed that celery is the perfect shape for making fish scales? Grab some paint—if you’re going for the Luca/Alberto effect, we recommend a variety of blues and purples. 

Print out the image above or draw your own! Then paint scales by dipping slices of celery into the paint repeatedly. Make a pattern to create a really cool effect! 

Hint: Scrape off the end of the celery so there’s less paint. Less is more in this craft.

If you want, you can add the torn seaweed from the first activity to the bottom of the image to make it look like the tail is under the water!

9 (M) — Spaghetti Contest

Which Contestant will eat the most spaghetti? Print and cut out the Spaghetti Cards and Contestants below.

You can play this game with as many kids as you wish! Simply print one set of Spaghetti Cards per player. No matter how many players, you’ll still only need one printout of the Contestants. 

How to Play:

1. Shuffle the Spaghetti Cards and deal evenly to each player. 
2. Place one of the Contestants in the center.
3. Players will each flip over one Spaghetti Card at a time. To practice with higher numbers, print multiples of the cards, then have each person flip over two cards or three to make a two- or three-digit number. 
4. The Contestant will eat the higher Spaghetti Card, so move it “into their mouth” (under them).  If it’s a tie (the two numbers are equal) then the Contestant doesn’t eat anything.
5. Once players have flipped over all their cards, play stops. 
6. Pull out the Spaghetti Cards the Contestant has eaten and add up the total Spaghetti (note: not how many cards were eaten, but how much actual Spaghetti). Write down the total. 
7. Then, shuffle all the Spaghetti Cards and re-deal, changing the Contestant in the middle to a new face. Once all three Contestants have eaten, the Contestant who ate the most Spaghetti wins!

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Have your kids practice saying “less than” or “greater than” as they play. If they’re not sure which way the triangle should be facing, remember that the mouth will always eat the larger number!

To find the total, we practiced our calculator skills, but you could have them do the math any way you’d like.

10 (T)— Draw a Bicycle

Learn to draw a bicycle in a few simple steps! A bicycle sounds complicated, but it’s really a collection of basic shapes. Just follow these directions and you’ll be making bicycles in no time! You can use colored pencils or markers or crayons—whatever you prefer.

Answer: ENCOURAGEMENT

1 Thessalonians 5:11—”Encourage one another and build each other up.”

Thank you for joining us on our adventure through Luca! Tell us in the comments how it went, and be sure to tag us on Instagram (@gamesafootquests) if you share pictures from your Quest! Happy Questing! 

Special thanks to Blue and Bird for drawing the images for today’s Quest! (Aren’t they amazing?!)