Lighthouse

Ages: 7-11
Contributor:
Sam Collins

Use this animated film about what happens when the light on a lighthouse goes out with your class.

Which of the activities below will you try?

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

Write a narration for the film.
Write a character sketch of the lighthouse keeper. What adjectives would you use to describe him?
Write the story from the point of view of one of the ship’s crew.
Make a storyboard of the story.
Compare this to other stories with lighthouses, for example, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch or The Lighthouse Cat.
Describe the settings; the town (0:20), inside the lighthouse (0:38), on the sea (1:35).
Make a list of vocabulary related to light. Could you make a glossary with definitions of these words?
Stop the video at certain points, for example (0:43), (2:01), (2:10). What is the lighthouse keeper thinking?

Find out about the lenses in lighthouses and how they work.
Make a model of a lighthouse with a working light and electric circuit / switch.

Stop the film at (0:31) and make your own silhouette pictures.
Explore spirals in art. Look at the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, and Georgia O’Keefe’s Red Hill and White Shell, for example.
Create your own spiral art.

What can you tell about the coastline if a lighthouse is needed? Compare to other types of coastline.
Find out how ships avoid hazards. What technology do they use?
Find the location of the nearest lighthouse to where you live.
Could you plot the locations of different lighthouses on a map?

In the film, the townspeople and the lighthouse keeper work together to achieve something they couldn’t do on their own. Can you think of other examples of this in stories, films or real life?
The film was commissioned by the company “Liberty Mutual” as part of their ‘Responsibility’ project. Whose responsibility is it to save the ship?