The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch

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Introduce your children to the story of Grace Darling, an early heroine of lighthouse keepers and lifeboats. Supply them with cardboard rolls and sheets of various shapes and sizes, collage materials such as sand and cotton wool, paints, sticky plastic, crepe paper, cellophane or clear film for the lantern so that the light will shine through it, and so on. Get the children to study a variety of lighthouses and talk about the requirements for an effective design. Sue Cowley takes The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch as inspiration for four fun-filled, ocean-themed activities.

Get your pupils to include the seascape which surrounds the lighthouse, as well as the lighthouse itself. Once their lighthouses are built, show the children how to make a complete circuit with a battery, wire and bulb.The wonderful vocabulary within the story is in itself a great reason for choosing this book to start your topic. The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch, by Ronda and David Armitage, is a brilliant book for inspiring classroom activities around the topic of the sea, its history and the brave people who keep us safe at the seaside and away from dry land. Talk with the children about the different methods Mrs Grinling tries in her attempts to foil the seagulls. Once the children have created their designs, offer the class a variety of resources with which to make a three-dimensional model.

After several failed attempts, she finally manages to foil the pesky birds with some mustard flavoured sandwiches! Now divide the children into pairs or groups, and ask them to come up with some alternative plans for stopping the seagulls eating the lunch. If possible, get the children to test some of their ideas for getting the lunch safely across to the lighthouse, setting up a line in your classroom, similar to that which runs over to the lighthouse.

The activities here would work well with a Y2 class, but could easily be adapted for younger or older pupils. They should then work out how to fix this into their lighthouse model, so that the light appears at the top inside the lantern section.