Our latest FIAR book is one that we've wanted to do for a long time, Night of the Moonjellies. Sadly, it's been out of print and our library doesn't have a copy. However, Rebecca did a little looking and the library near her parents had a copy, so we picked it up from them.
It turned out to be just as great as we'd hoped and heard. It's a really neat story that mostly focuses on a hot dog/burger stand that used to be in Connecticut years ago and the 7-year-old boy who worked there one summer with his grandparents and older relatives. The boy found a tiny jellyfish on the beach while looking for shells and put it in a bag of seawater. After a very busy day at the restaurant, his grandmother took him out on a friend's boat to where there were thousands of jellyfish swarming and helped him release his back into the ocean.
The first thing we talked about was the New England States. The timing was great because we've been talking about the pilgrims and the founding of places like Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
We looked at all kinds of stuff about jellyfish and a lot of it was really interesting, though none of the kids particularly like the idea of a jellyfish, especially one that stings.
For an art project, they painted jellyfish by making a pool of watered-down paint and then tilting the page to make the "tentacles." Then they splattered a little more on to make "bubbles" in the water. It was messy, but they had a lot of fun.
Another craft that we did was jellyfish in a bottle. Now, I am not a "crafty" person, but I can usually follow instructions pretty well. This is one of those crafts that I nearly gave up on. It took me several tries to get it right and I'm still not entirely happy with them. However, the kids love them and that's what matters.
I just want to point out that I was trying to get both boys doing it, but Ezra was being so... Ezra-like that I couldn't get a good picture of him with the bottle. :)
The kids really enjoyed hearing about the food they made and the busy-ness of the stand. An exercise they did was to come up with their own menu for a restaurant. It was really funny because they started naming things that they eat for lunches and dinners and I realized they pretty much like cheese with everything. :)
Probably the best "project" we did was going to a burger stand that is probably similar is style to the one in the book, though this one didn't serve lobster rolls. :) It's a place on Lee Street here in Greensboro called Beef Burger. We got the kids cheeseburgers and fries and fried okra. For drinks they got milkshakes. It was quite a hit with them all.
Probably the most memorable thing for them was the video games. They'd never been in a place that had them, so they were fascinated by them We got there while a couple of guys were servicing the machines and one of them put a few free games on the Ms. PacMan game for the kids. They just loved that. :)
