There must be at least a thousand and one World War II movies out there. We even own a few, but I am have having a hard time showing them to my kids. They are either too violent (I love Band of Brothers but it is way more graphic than my boys are ready for) or also contain other things that I really don't want my boys exposed to yet. Operation Petticoat, Kelly's Heros and Father Goose come to mind. I am not even tempted to show South Pacific. Maybe I am getting a bit more selective, because these are films I watched as a kid. We even own a few of them on DVD. I just don't find them particularly praiseworthy now. And I guess I would rather my kids use their time doing something else. They do get to watch movies once in awhile so I try to introduce only the good ones. So far I have shown them Tora Tora Tora and The Longest Day. I was surprised that they got so involved in The Longest Day. Henry was a little skeptical about it being in Black and White and there was a point in the film when Ian asked "When is the longest day ever going to get started". I guess he wanted to see the action and less of the waiting around and talking about the invasion. When it was over Henry said "I totally forgot that it wasn't in color" and "lets watch this one again tomorrow". I actually plan to show The Great Escape next. I know my boys will love the digging of the tunnel and the motorcycle chase.
We have talked about The Sound of Music and The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and how they fit into the war. We have watched these two films many times so they know them well. Those aren't directly about the war but the war does play a part in the story. Am I missing any great WWII films that would be appropriate for boys under the age of 8 to watch? Sophie watches these films with us but doesn't get quite as involved in them and sort of comes and goes while doing different things. But my boys get very excited when the action gets going. I can tell they really like the fighting and the guns and explosives. Boys just love these types of things.
We are pretty much finished with WWII and really should be moving ahead in our History. I think we have covered just about everything without going too far into the details of what went on in concentration camps or what Japan was like after the atomic bombs. Those things are for us to cover in one of the next times this time period comes around in our History rotations.
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I don't think I've ever seen The Longest Day. I should check it out. It's hard to find WWII movies that aren't graphic. We watched the Scarlet and the Black which was maybe a little too intense for them. They liked it though. We actually turned to netflix for lots of documentaries. We watched a Nova episode where they excavated the Great Escape tunnels 50 years later. Hitler's Lost Sub was really good. And since C is into shipwrecks, Nat'l Geographic has several shows about Kennedy's PT boat, the Bismarck, the ships of Guadalcanal, and Pearl Harbor. (We're still making our way through these!)
We also watched the Fighting Sullivans which was about 5 brothers growing up together. The last 15 minutes maybe is about them joining the Navy after Pearl Harbor. But they all make it onto the same ship and it goes down, so it was quite sad, but my boys really enjoyed the rest of the story about the brothers.
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