Espionage Lesson

A couple of months ago, our curriculum had us covering 'Espionage & Communication". WOW- how much fun could that be- or so I thought. It was more fun than I could have ever imagined.

The basis of the lesson came from our Bible lesson, as does all of Weaver. The Bible lesson was centered around Joshua  sending two men to Jericho to spy out the land and the crossing of the Jordan River by the Children of Israel. My children actually became spies- I have some pics of them dressing up to appear "spyful"-is that a word? Anyway, I told them to spy on each other without each other knowing. They had their little notebooks, ect...They did pretty good and decided they wanted to keep it going- not a good idea! For the crossing of the Jordan, we learned that there was a difference between the Red Sea rolling back and the Jordan River actually having an "invisible" dam. For this, the kids went out in the backyard and built a dam out of sticks and rocks. My daughter wanted her dam to also be used for irrigation purposes. After the dams were built, we tried them out and to our amazement- they really worked! My daughter's  "crops" had just enough water and her city survived. WOW! For the stones that were placed in the middle of the Jordan, each of the children painted some rocks I got from out of the driveway and wrote the name of each of the 12 tribes on them.

We learned about different types of bridges- which is another thing I thought would not be interesting, but once again, it was. As was suggested in the Weaver, we looked for different bridges while on our way to church-I was surprised at the amount of bridges we used on a regular basis and didn't realize it. I asked the kids how hard would it be for us to attend church without bridges. I found a website where the kids could build a virtual bridge and see if it could withstand an earthquake: http://www.newbaybridge.org/classroom/

We built satellites out of Lego's and of course we watched "Spy Kids" movies and a Disney movie about a little girl and a pet chimpanzee that was a spy- I can't remember the name of it, but it was decent and fun to watch.

Because there were so many activities in this chapter, we didn't do a lapbook with this one, but another Mom did and her ideas were great!!! Of course we took a trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum on the opening day of the "Spy Exhibit" It was exactly what we needed. It helped to solidify in their minds what they had learned. Oh, they day the exhibit opened, the museum was CROWDED so, since then we have gone back at least 2 times then we could it enjoy it more without so many people being there. Here's a link to spy games: http://www.children smuseum.org/ special_exhibits /spyclub/

We made the attache cases using vanilla folder and Velcro and wrote
TOP SECRET on the cover and Secret Agent (child's name). I folded
them off center.

Things that we put in our attache cases:
*Typed I Peter 5:8 on cardstock with a lion sticker and put it in a
pocket.
*Made a minibook of Epigrams by Benjamin Franklin. They were copied
from Benjamin Franklin by d'Aulaire.
*Made a pocket for a paper whirly-copter we made out of paper. It was
invented by Alexander Graham Bell. He had an idea of a flying machine
that would fly straight up and down- we call them helicopters.
*A pocket contains homemade paper we made (Chinese) and a piece of
*clay with writing (Sumerians).
*Put in pictures of children inventing a flashlight. It did work too.
*Put in pictures of them making the clay tablets, inventing bridges,
making paper, painting frescoe on plaster like Michelangelo.
*And one of the spy treasure hunt after they solved the secret codes
and found the hidden clues and finally the treasure.
*Picture of my son standing on his popsicle stick bridge that he
invented.
*Envelope containing chromatography experiment.
*timeline from creation to 1250 BC.
*An envelope fold for inventions and inventors.
*light sensitive paper that they decorated and exposed. Placed in a
pocket with what the items were on the back. Can you guess what was
on the paper?
*There is an extension with Secret Codes written on it.
* One is the deaf code: a braille alphabet and a photocopy of the
hand alphabet.
*There are a couple illusions.
*One page has a list of books read or listened to, Nancy Drew
Mysteries solved on CDROM, and spy Movies watched.

Sandy

If you want more info on her lapbook- email me and I'll foward it to her.