K-2 Activities


Ideas to try....

Think about the jobs that people had 100-150 years ago around Penobscot Bay. What characteristics, interests, and talents did they require? What would you have done in those days?
Do any of these jobs still exist? What jobs do your family and neighbors do?  How do people today use the resources of the Bay?

English Language Arts
Teachers: Read Cocoa Ice to the class (see Resource List). Have students act out or retell the story (orally, dictation, in writing, or through art). What is the main idea?  Which character would students rather be?

Many numbers are important in Working the Bay; for example, weights, prices, number of ships built, and number of islands in Penobscot Bay. Compare and order numbers, emphasizing concepts of more and less. Compare wages and prices with those of today.

Identify shapes in  sails, bricks, blocks of ice, etc. Look up buildings and monuments built with Maine granite. Use postitional words to describe work:  making lime, shipping ice, etc. (over, under, above, below.)

Measure bricks and guess their weights.  Using a circle of children, demonstrate the size of a cord of wood or the diameter of a large white pine tree.

Create patterns using drawings of sailing vessels: ships, schooners, sloops.

Science and Technology
Classify Maine products in multiple ways.  Examine samples of wood and rock with a magnifying glass.  Compare and describe characteristics.

How did Maine’s weather affect work?  Consider cutting ice, fishing, harvesting timber, shipping.
What inventions affected work on the Bay?  Refrigeration, steam power, railroads, and trucks were some.
Some kinds of  work around the Bay also created useful waste products— sawdust was used to pack ice, fish waste used for fertilizer, hemlock bark for tanning leather—does that happen today?  How?

Social Studies
What was different about families in the past? Consider children’s work, mothers’ jobs, school.
Locate places important to Working the Bay on the map:  Bangor, Castine, Rockland, Vinalhaven, Deer Isle. Who were consumers of Maine’s products?  What products do people consume today?  Where do they come from?

Visual and Performing Arts
Art is a way to express what you have learned: draw a picture illustrating one type of work people did around Penobscot Bay in the past, and one type of work people do now.