Ideas for TGTWTP

[Debbie W]

We are rowing TGTWTP this week. Any good ideas on what to do? We are covering Egypt and France of course and maybe the Mediterranian. I also have a floor puzzle of giraffes. We'll be putting the pages we do and pictures colored in the scrapbook we have of the books we cover.

Sometimes though I just come up blank on really cool interesting ideas. Boy now if I could get a plaster cast made of a giraffes footprint now that would be cool!

[Lynna]

We are rowing TGTWTP this week.

I'm new, what is this?

[Rebe]

Lynna, it's The Giraffe that Walked to Paris.

The two most memorable things we did for this book were to tape several sheets of paper together until we reached 11 feet (I think that's right), which is the height of a giraffe. You can also do this for the tongue, with a narrow strip of paper. I think the measurement is 17 inches (?). We taped both of those into a lapbook, where you can fold them out to see how long they are.

The other thing they really remembered is our trip to the zoo. If you can see a real giraffe walking, your dc will recognize the unusual gait that's surprises the king so much in the book.

[MichelleL in Tn]

Well we are rowing that next month. I have a book about a baby giraffe -I forget the name of it I think it is "Nellie" and I also have another book called Master Man (http://amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/102-2954537-0719366?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=master+man)by Aaron Shepard (About Nigeria) so we will be reading that as a go along.

I have not checked the archives yet for any go alongs though.

[MarieD]

We picked up every junior non-fiction title on giraffes that we could find at our library. My dd loved the real life pictures. I rememver them all being short with great pictures (I am thinking one was from the series "True Book")

TGTWTP inspired my dd's (and my! ;) ) love of giraffes!

[Kendra AU]

We will be doing this book this school year. The info in the manual is very simple so I've made notes to cover just about all of it.

One of the topics in the manual is knowing your subject when drawing in art. So I thought I'd come up with something my children have never seen before like a porcupine or something, and ask them to draw it. This will really throw my six year old, because he likes to look at what he draws, he's very exact in his work. Then once they've attempted it I'll show them a picture so they know what they are suppose to be drawing.

We're rowing around the world this year, so my boys will also be earning a patch for Egypt (think FIAR meets Scouts) for this book. Anyway, they'll be following the route that was taken by the giraffe by sticking our story disk in where she started, and using a bit of colored string and tacks to show which way she went.

On the archives there's a neat calendar idea as well which would map up really well. I think my children will appreciate this, because of the time involved in our moving to Australia and then how excruciatingly long it was for them. All though I strongly suspect I'll hear "did the giraffe have to brush her teeth in the airport too?" :lol:

My four year old is a giraffe fanatic, and I found some plastic giraffes that were a playset for 2.00. We'll be pulling those out for them as well, just to have fun with.

You could ask at your zoo about the mold of the foot. We visited the zoo in Atlanta, I believe that was the one, and they had a giraffe skull on hand for the kids to touch and look at. My kids were impressed, but turned and asked the zoo keeper displaying the object exactly WHY they had a giraffe head. My children are never short of questions when it comes to trips like that. The Knoxville Zoo has a wooden painted Giraffe hanging up near the giraffe enclosure. You are suppose to stand near by and see how tall you are in comparison.

My kids were equally impressed to know that even if Mommy, Daddy, Grams, and Poppy stood on each other's shoulders we wouldn't be tall enough to pat the giraffe head.

I'm hoping we can get in touch with my SIL who is French, her parents still live there. I read an article online the other day stating that the giraffe wasn't still in the museum, which I found off, because all other info said it was still there. We thought we'd ask her if she knew, and if she happened to have any photos of it. If she doesn't know we have two other friends who are from France who may be able to shed light on this. I'm also hoping I might be able to obtain flags for the boys.

Kendra

[Christie]

My kids had fun learning the word "giraffe" in different languages. We did English, French, Arabic, Swedish (because DH's side of the family is Swedish), and Spanish (just because it is a good language to learn).

[Paige P]

Someone posted this earlier (I "copy" ideas into Word files and keep them so I can have them later ;) ). I haven't used it, so I can't vouch for anything, but it may be something cute......


I found this cute giraffe project on the Crayola.com site. My model turned out very nicely. I printed it on cardstock and used a standard school glue stick to put it together......
http://crayola.com/activitybook/print.cfm?id=605
(If Caryola.com asks you to register, don't worry, it's free, and I've never gotten any spam from them. They DO have a newsletter, but I opted out of it.)

[stacy z]

we baked gingerbread giraffes. :yum: "And when the children went to the zoo to see the real giraffe, they bought gingerbread giraffes and ate them all up"

we also went to the zoo to see the 3 new giraffes that our local zoo has just aquired! :cool: we watched how they walked and bent over to drink. we took close up pictures of their spot patterns so we could identify the types of giraffes. i am planning on using enlarged color copies of these pictures for our notebooking.

we made a large poster of La Girafe after reading, "They put pictures of her on the signboards of bakeries and resturants, hotels and grocery stores. Soon there were giraffe pictures in every town she'd walked through."

we drew the giraffe's path from egypt to paris on the map.

bethany did a report on giraffes using the animal classification form from homeschoolshare. (thanks, ami*!)

have fun! TGTWTP is a great book! :glasses:

[Debbie W]

Wow, Kendra that is so cool that your sil is French. Do you think she could get a photo of the giraffe? Big hint, I would love to have a photo to put in our scrapbook! :roflol:

I love the ideas. I actually did think of taping paper together to show the height of a giraffe. I think I will tape paper together to show the height of the giraffe and then tape paper together to show McKenna's height now and place them in the book together.

I'd love to make a trip to the zoo. Do you all think if I asked the zoo keepers could/would make a plaster cast of a giraffe footprint for us?

[Krista Joy]

Well, if you want a really adventurous field trip... you could come see us in Niger! The last wild giraffes in W. Africa live 1 hr out of town. See the pic in my avatar? That's a yearling wild giraffe in the background. Last time we went to see them was after a big rain, and we had fun walking in their (HUGE!!) dried up footprints. We saw a group of about 20, including 3 babies. So fun!

I wish I'd thought of the plaster of paris idea- I could have gotten you a great one! If you do want to come visit, you fly through Paris on the way here. You could kill two birds with one stone. :lol:

I've never even been able to find even a library copy of TGTWTP to even read it, but I sure would love to find it someday- we've got some great real life activities to go along with it.