Teaching Up On The Downs
Be a Lighthouse Keeper for the Day
Activities:
Pre-Visit Work
Read the story ‘The Lighthouse Keepers Lunch’, by Ronda Armitage, to the class.
Plan the visit to South Foreland Lighthouse. What would be needed on such a trip? Organise a healthy lunch for the trip that any lighthouse keeper would want to tuck into!
VISIT ACTIVITIES
Sensory Warm-Up
Close your eyes for a couple of minutes. What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you smell? Open your eyes, what can you see?
Geography
Scenario - Look out to sea and see if you can spot a boat that might be from the lighthouse keeper’s story.
Use a compass to work out what direction the boat is.
Everyone mark out a big compass on the ground using their day bags.
Game - With the class standing in a grid close to the compass, directions of the compass are called out, and everyone turns and swings their arm as a pointer to the direction called. This can be done with N, E, S, & W bearings and also NE, SE, SW, & NW if people find it easy. Try it again with a sequence of 5 directions, but this time with everyone doing it with closed eyes – see if anyone is pointing in the right direction after the final call.
Materials Resources Needed – directional compasses
Maths
Scenario – A part of the lighthouse keeper’s job is to check that everything at the lighthouse is kept in good order, especially after any recent storms.
Explore the building and its surroundings making a checklist, describing it in terms of numbers and shapes. Make a chart of anything needing to be cleaned, polished or repaired, and what colours you would paint each item on the list if it were your lighthouse?
e.g. Front door – 1 – Rectangle – Needs washing – Paint it Yellow.
Materials Resources Needed – workbooks, pens
Science - Materials
Scenario – You have a large cardboard box to put the class lunches into, which you need to be able to protect from the seagulls and also possible rain.
Given a selection of paper, foil, polythene, cloth, etc, which would survive best from inquisitive seagulls? Test each material with a finger tip acting as a seagull’s beak. Spray each material with water and see if it copes as well? Which is the strongest material? Which is waterproof? Which would you use to protect the contents of the lunch box on a rainy day?
Materials Resources Needed – Large cardboard box, paper, tin foil, polythene, cloth, sticky tape.
Literacy (1)
Imagine you are looking after the lighthouse on a stormy night. Write notes for the lighthouse logbook about what happens with time, what you see (a ship in trouble, lights out at sea) etc, and what signals you send appealing for help.
Literacy (2)
Imagine you are leaving the lighthouse keeper job. Write an advertisement for the job to recruit the new keeper.
Materials Needed – paper, pencils.
Post-Visit Work
Build a model lighthouse, incorporating an electric circuit that powers a light bulb beacon.