My family lived on the windiest farm on Windy Hill. It was all we could afford
The Windy Farm by Craig Macleod and illustrated by Craig Smith is a funny and lighthearted look at the importance of wind power and environmental sustainability.
Windy hill is a windy place – so much so that the family need to wear heavy metal shoes and one particularly windy day, the house blew away! The family rebuild the house and notice how quickly the windmill spins – leading them to come up with a great plan to build more windmills and create a wind farm!
The Windy Farm explores the differences between oil and wind power for energy and how if we harness wind power it is endless – very different to the fossil fuel reliance.
The illustrations by Craig Smith are fun to examine as you read along adding more detail and humour to the story.
So how can you use this book?
Literacy
- Why did Grandpa always say never mind?
- Do we often see women being portrayed as inventors? Gender stereotypes.
- Antonyms – what are the antonyms to these words: Greedy, Poor, Windy, stupid, old, borrow.
- How was humour used in this story? List some funny pictures, characters or sentences that made you laugh.
- How do the images add more to the story (pages: mum inventing the shoes, windproof house, ad with clean energy sign)
- Illustrators and authors often work together to create picture books SO: Create your own story in groups – have illustrators, writers and idea creators to either write their own version of windy farm or another sustainable issue: Rainy farm, Sunny farm, thermal farm etc.
Poetry
– What is wind? Where does it come from? (A.A.Milne poem). Read through the poem and create another poem using the same starting verse. Use other weather phenomenon – Rain, Thunder, Lightning, Coldness, warmth or rewrite own version of wind.
No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.
It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.
But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.
And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.
So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.
Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/wind-on-the-hill-by-a-a-milne
Sustainability.
- What is a wind farm?
- Where are they located – are there any close to you?
- What are the pros and cons of wind farms?
- What is a renewable resource? What isn’t renewable?
- Are there ways in which you could make your house more sustainable? Look at an example of a sustainable house and ask children to redesign their own house to make it more sustainable.
