Friday 8 July 2011

Miss Rumphius

Before we rowed Make Way For Ducklings, we rowed Miss Rumphius, so technically, this post should come before the last one. (rolls eyes) (Does anyone know how to put emoticons in posts, by the way?)
Just for a change, and because it seemed like there were more opprtunities for practical hands-on activities with this book, I decided not to do lapbooks with the kids just to see how it went. It went fine :0)
We stuck it all on the wall instead :0)

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney is the story of a woman who was inspired by her grandfather to not only fulfill her childhood ambitions, but also to do something to make the world more beautiful. This she does by scattering lupin seeds all around her town which flower and spread creating a colourful and beautiful display.

We learned about habitats and made jungle collages and reread our Tiger notebook, looked at animals in Australia and saw kangaroos at Chester Zoo; plotted her journey on a blank world map; learned about bushels and did some measuring and long multiplication to find how many packets of seeds were in 5 bushels (245,760); revisited seeds and grew cress; had a go at painting lupins and plantpots; planted lupins - seeds, tubers and plants and had interesting discussions on family traditions and how to make the world more beautiful ourselves.

The Girl's collage

boykin's collage







A bushel of Boy



Plantpot painting

Kangaroo at the zoo
Measuring















We had a lot of fun but were disppointed that our lupin seeds didn't come up, neither did the tubers and the flower of the beautiful blue lupin that I planted got eaten very quickly, presumably by slugs :0( I guess that the climate in my Yorkshire garden is not as good for growing lupins as the climate in Miss Rumphius' seaside town. Ho hum!

Books we used:

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