Design Challenge with The BFG

My third graders just finished reading The BFG by Roald Dahl. We were lucky enough to receive a group set of copies through Donors Choose earlier this year. This is such a good book and they enjoyed the sweet, mixed-up language of the Big Friendly Giant as well as the triumph of good over evil.

We dissected some of the words the BFG uses in the book. Students discovered that even though they had never seen these words, they somehow understood what he meant. They categorized the words as having a positive or negative connotation as well as what part of speech they were: adjective, verb or noun. Then, students made up a BFG-esque word. Some that they created were:

haptent - happy and content

exprised - being excited about being surprised

blupy (not pictured) - feeling of being sad

naughtiwick - naughty and wicked

nastyful - disgusting

We ended the unit with a STEM challenge. Students were tasked with making a fork large enough for the BFG to use for breakfast at the Queen’s palace. In the chapter, The Royal Breakfast, the head butler has to make some quick calculations to fashion a chair and table for the Big Friendly Giant. To do this, he multiplies the dimensions of each by four. We applied the same math to a fork. Students then worked to design a fork for the BFG that was 28 inches long with limited materials (i.e. tin foil, cardboard, masking tape, straws and popsicle sticks). They did an amazing job of working together and creating a fork suitable for the BFG. We had so much fun with this design challenge.