The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch

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The book tells the story of Mr Grinling, the lighthouse keeper, and the trouble his wife has getting his lunch across from the mainland. Mrs Grinling prepares her husband a delicious lunch, but the seagulls keep eating it before it reaches him. After several failed attempts, she finally manages to foil the pesky birds with some mustard flavoured sandwiches! Choose two types of sandwiches and make a Venn diagram to show which children like / don’t like each of them.

Hopefully you can now do the story and innovate as one unit and then another unit on factfiles/Non-chronological reports.

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For an even better way to find KS2 resources, discover tailored suggestions, and much more - visit the KS2 resource HUB! GO TO KS2 HUB Children can work out the weight, price or size of the different foods in his lunch. They would be faced with children which needs them to focus on measurements and calculations such as addition and subtraction. Role-play the different characters in the story (Mr and Mrs Grinling, Hamish the cat, and the seagulls). How were they feeling at different points in the story? Next, get your children to plan a menu for the most delicious lunch they can think of, to go in their seagull proof basket. Look at the food that Mrs Grinling prepares in the story - do they agree that it’s delicious? What kind of food would they want in their ‘ideal’ 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 children could redesign the basket so that it is ‘seagull proof’, exploring a range of different materials and designs before examining which one would work best. But they might also come up with something else to go in the basket/lunch to put the seagulls off - lateral thinking is the key! Stunning lighthouse pictures: http://abduzeedo.com/amazing-pictures-lighthouses Activity 3: Grace under pressure 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. The wonderful vocabulary within the story is in itself a great reason for choosing this book to start your topic. Words such as ‘industrious’, ‘concocts’ and ‘brazen’ help this tale trip off your tongue. Get your children thinking about what these new words mean, using the sound and the context to help them work it out.

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Sue Cowley takes The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch as inspiration for four fun-filled, ocean-themed activities... There are lots of interesting words in the story (e.g. brazen, ingenious, consolingly). Can you find any words that you don’t know and write a definition of them? Finally, ask each group to present their ideas to the class. Have they found a better solution than Mrs Grinling? Is their lunch more delicious than the one that Mrs Grinling made? Take a whole class vote to decide on the winning group, and then re-write the story, using the alternative lunch, and an ending which features your winning ‘seagull proofing’ idea. Activity 2: Ray of light Mr Grinling is an ‘industrious’ lighthouse keeper. What does this mean? Can you think of any words that mean the same thing? Mr and Mrs Grinling star in a number of other books including The Light House Keeper’s Catastrophe, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Rescue, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Picnic, and The Lighthouse Keeper’s Cat

Use the lighthouse in the book as a starting point for a design and technology activity. Get the children to study a variety of lighthouses and talk about the requirements for an effective design. What are the main elements of a lighthouse design and why is it built in this way? What kind of things does a lighthouse need to withstand? What colours are used for lighthouses and why might these colours have been chosen? A sweet book, that is easy to read. I read it to reception, they engaged with the book and found parts very funny. Use this lighthouse tour video to describe the inside and outside of a lighthouse, as well as the amazing views from the top. Plan and carry out an investigation to find out the strength of different materials. Which would be best to protect the lighthouse keeper’s lunch? Explore the forces in action when Mr Grinling rows his boat out to the lighthouse. What forces are in action when his lunch is being carried along the wire?Write a diary from the point of view of Mr Grinling. Use this video to get some ideas for your work: