Little Red Lighthouse-Great Gray Bridge Notebooks

With all this talk about The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, I thought I'd share the notebooks. We used the FIAR Fold n Learn for this title which turned out really nicely.

The kids had to make a list of the rivers in NY- the major ones. We talked about origins of rivers and where they flow to. I let the kids choose a mini book to make. They also made a lighthouse out of shapes and copied a Bible verse. E11 chose his own Bible verse on light and copied all of Psalm 27 which has either been sung or read in church the last two weeks to his delight. This is R9's notebook.
The kids did some mapping as previously posted and we used an activity from the Fold n Learn to map some sights on Manhattan Island. We reviewed cardinal directions and the compass rose and the kids put the sites on the map roughly where they go. Given the restraints of space, I had them draw a line to where the landmark is on the map.
Both R9 and I7 did some copywork from Draw Write Now with the Statue of Liberty. We did a lesson on compound words and on balancing titles. All three kids labeled the types of words in the title of the book. This was a good review of some basic parts of speech.
I made a review sheet for personification. The kids had to tell what it is in their own words and list the other FIAR stories we've read that use personification. Then, of course, they personified something! I love I7's personified lighthouse below.
We used the state fact sheet from Olde World Maps by Homeschool in the Woods. I wanted to include I7's because here you can see how I had him list his NY rivers to me. He dictated his list to me while I typed it into StartWrite so he could use the list as copywork. LOVE to do this!
This is I7's Draw Write Now page and it shows the Bridge Builder challenge we did. I had the kids put this challenge page in their lapbook. They had to list the materials they used because they were on their own page and on the back they put pictures from the post below in sequential order. I even have a few with their actual faces for them to enjoy! It was a good sequencing activity and it made for a nice review and a fine notebook page.
This concludes our study of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. It was a lot of fun!

We have moved on to The Salamander Room and I already have notebook pages to share with you. We have been super busy, but doing some really good schooling just the same. Lots to share. This week the play is the thing so bare with me if my blogging slows down. What play? Oh don't worry...there will be a post!

Bridge Challenge

Michelle at Delightful Learning was posting instant challenges for us all to enjoy. I think she has since discontinued them, at least for now but there are more than a few to try out if you haven't done so and she has shared her resource with everyone if this is something your kids really like.

This went right along with our study of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge so we tried it one afternoon. E11 is reading the challenge to everyone. They had to build a bridge from using only the materials given which were a set of playing cards and a pair of scissors. There were some tape squares marking where the ends of the bridge needed to be and no part of the bridge could touch down outside of the squares. The squares were placed according to the directions.


At first they weren't so sure but kept trying different ways of making bases and making sure nothing else touched anywhere else. They quickly figured out that just trying to get the cards to layer over each other to make a bridge was not going to work. I will admit I start asking some questions to expand their thinking.

Finally, they began to use the scissors! It took them some time to adjust the snips to where they worked best.
I7 started hooking cards together in this way and things started to take shape. When you are working with the kids this way, you have to encourage them to involve everyone. Just like with groups of adults, some kids naturally take the lead and delegating is a learned skill!
They are getting down to the final steps. The bases were not quite holding up the way they'd planned so some more adjustments needed to be made. I had to remind them to practice "gracious professionalism" as we say in FIRST LEGO League. That's not always easy.
I bucked the system and went with Funtastic Frogs as weights. Yes! The bridge holds weight!
The bridge held two frogs and we went for three. Yes! It will hold three small frogs! Notice how the bases were adjusted sideways which made them stronger.
However, four frogs would prove to be too much. All in all a great effort by the team!
Our local Sciencenter has an exhibit on bridge building right now. They always have the best books to look at. I've had the Bridges! book on the upper right checked out for months. What a great resource if you are looking to have fun with bridges. Which we were. With our story of the George Washington Bridge in NYC.
They have all kinds of bridge building materials in the exhibit. So, this made for a great field trip for bridge studies.
We didn't do as much as we might have simply because we ran out of time. Next layer on the next time around. No problem!

The Truth about New York

E11 has been working so hard on this game. He's finally finished! As part of our study of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, E11 decided he wanted to make a game to learn things about NY. I had in mind a travel brochure, but I thought why not. Surely he put more effort into this game than I ever would have gotten on a travel brochure! Lesson to homeschooling moms: be open to a change of plans!

When I saw how excited the kids were about this project, I splurged and bought some game making materials from Bare Books. They sell blanks of lots of fun things including game boards and other game making supplies like money! The cost is very nominal, but you have to have a $25 minimum order. So, I stocked up.

I bought two game boards with squares around it and two blank ones waiting for creativity, two packs of blank money, and a couple of blank spirals for notebooking.
E11 did a great job on all the details of the game. He started by making up all the trivia questions- 20 for each deck (group and solo). Then he set about making game pieces. He chose NY landmarks, saved the images and put them in a paint program for resizing then into a word document for printing at one time. We used cardstock and then I laminated them. We used little plastic stands from a Pooh Candyland game (we don't set up all the characters anymore) and it works great. He chose the Statue of Liberty, the George Washington Bridge (of course), the state capital building, Niagara Falls, apples, and The Wilder Farm in Malone, NY. Very fun!


After making the trivia questions, he designed the board. He chose cities from around NY that would go onto a board like Monopoly. He had to adjust when he found out there are fewer spaces on our board. He grouped them by proximity and population. Pretty cool. I helped with the game board itself at his request. Sharpie markers to the rescue and some good handwriting and voila! Instant gameboard. We also used stickers we'd gotten from Bare Books and a local craft store.
These cards are the improvement cards- think hotels and houses from the Monopoly game. Once you get a city set and a building permit you can put improvements in your cities. Improvements are parks, campgrounds, and monuments. Pretty clever.
I plan to laminate these cards sets so they last a while and because they have pictures glued to them. It took some tweaking as they played. For example, they needed the second set of money because there wasn't enough in one set and they started with two die and realized that took you around the board way too fast. So, now they use one.
The property cards- names of cities with the list of rent and what rent costs with improvements.
E11 considered typing out all his cards, but preferred to do it this way in the end. He is planning to enter this game into the 4-H Fair so he may end up typing it for that.

He spent a lot of time typing out the direction sheet. It has two columns and carefully explains the game. I thought about putting them up in Scribd, but that might not be so exciting for you all. Just let me know if you'd like to see them and I'll post them. Great writing assignment for E11. It's not always easy to write good directions.

This was a lot of fun for E11 and a great way to review state geography and history. R9 has a game in mind but lost her motivation very quickly- I think this was due to watching all the gobs of work E11 was doing...she thought better of it! However, I think she can pull it out with my help. It's also a well thought out game.

I'm saving the game boards for a game I have in mind- on habitats. The first stop will be freshwater habitats.

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

Two weeks ago we started a FIAR book we have not done before in honor of a trip we were supposed to have taken a couple weekends ago. The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge is a wonderful little story about a lighthouse on the Hudson River right on Manhattan Island. We had this trip to NYC scheduled earlier this year- another tag along trip with Dan. Unfortunately, we have been all kinds of sick. Even Dan missed three days of work. We had one on the nebulizer, one with a fever keeping her up at night, and one with severe pollen allergies. Though, E11 is on copious allergy meds including an antihistamine for his eyes, his eyes were nearly swollen shut from going outside. So, we've been doing some light schooling and I've been busy taking care of everyone and making sure they are all taking their medicine. So...no trip to New York City this time.

I purchased the FIAR fold n learn to go with this story and we had some fun today putting together the folders for an actual lapbook. I don't always use the file folders so this was a novelty.

We spent some time mapping New York State. It's always nice when we visit our home state with a study. I always take the opportunity to pause and get a good look around so we can report on that for the quarter. I used the Old World Maps from Homeschool in the Woods and I used the state report page from the US Map set. I really like it, but it did challenge the kids to go beyond the state bird and flower. They didn't like that so much. The book below is The United States of America- A State by State Guide.


Our kids love maps. I mean really love maps. They will come to me and ask if they can print them so they can play adventure. How can you refuse that? Print on kids! Map the world!
Both E11 and R9 have designed a New York State board game. E11's is almost done. He's actually waiting on me to cut up some more cards from poster board. I took the time to order the game boards from Bare Books along with some NY stickers. E11's game is called The Truth about New York and is a combination of trivia and real estate activity. You can buy cities as "properties" and instead of building just hotels, you have to make some improvement like parks and museums. His game is well thought out and pretty clever. Once he gets those property cards made, then we need to play it a few times to see how it plays. He's been enjoying the process. I'll be sure to blog on the final product.

More on this study to come!