Tolkien Presentations

2 Plans for interactive presentations for children up to 12 and 12+

Presentations on this page:

• Playing in Middle-earth (up to 12)
• Greetings from Rohan young people (12+)

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Playing in Middle-earth (up to 12)

Resources - ideally the children should have

• coloured pencils
• plain and ruled paper
• rune charts and outline drawings for the dwarf game
• photocopies of the relevant parts of The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
• A flip chart

The presentation is based around Tolkien's book The Hobbit with short excursions into The Lord of the Rings, but will respond to the interests of the children and their knowledge of the books.

Begin by finding out what the children already know. We can discuss favourite characters, episodes, scary bits, dragons and monsters, getting the children to define these and say how they feel about them.

If necessary we will get to know what hobbits and their homes look like using the description in Chapter 1 of The Hobbit. Discussion of differences, including hairy feet and round doors!

We can move on to the description of the dwarves, found in Chapter 1 and this will give the children an opportunity to draw and colour in their own dwarf. We will talk about dwarf names and the children will be invited to name their dwarf, decide what it likes to eat and drink, and what it carries. They will be encouraged, by referring to the story, to decide how it arrives (this involves using adverbs).

We can move on to learning runes. This has proved popular in other presentations. Rune charts can be found in the Runes Pack as well as information to show why runes were used.

Look at Gandalf's use of the /G/ rune in The Lord of the Rings as well as Daeron's runes used on the Doors of Moria and in Moria.
The children will be able to make up their own messages using the rune charts supplied. They will find out how Tolkien makes up names out of runes and will be able to play with this idea.

Greetings from Rohan (using the Old English Study Packs) young people (12+)

Learn to say more than just 'good health'!

Resources

• pencils and paper
• copies of The Lord of the Rings

This presentation offers the chance for young people to

• talk about their interest in The Lord of the Rings (either the films or the books).
• talk about any other works by Tolkien,
• read and talk about their favourite bits of the books (short bits only)
• get to know more about how Tolkien created the kingdom of the horse lords in Middle-earth.
• learn a little more about the language Tolkien used for the horse lords, and Treebeard's Old List.
• find out what 'orthanc' and 'ent' really mean.

It will include getting to know:

• How Tolkien used Anglo-Saxon words as the basis for names and greetings.
• How to write and use Old English runes