La Pérouse the Explorer Game with 6 Game Expansions Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
This game has a local twist
for Monterey County (CA) residents, since the French trade explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de
Toulouse (1741 – 1788) set shore in Monterey as one stop of his exploration of
the Pacific before disappearing in Vanikoro (the Solomon Islands).
This French trade explorer
know as La Pérouse was
on a “scientific” mission given to him by King Louis XVI of France to find
markets for the French fashion industry’s fur trade from suppliers in Canada
and the US and to find fertile whaling grounds.
No doubt his sailors ate like the ones described in Hermann Melville’s Moby
Dick.
This is a detective game that
requires some reading and analysis to answer task questions whose answers still
affect international politics today.
Moby Dick Questions:
-Which countries had whaling
industries?
-How were different parts of
the whale used?
-How were sailors on the
boats fed versus the officers?
The Journals of La Pérouse
Basically, La Pérouse had to do the following
tasks:
-locate fur markets in Asia
for the French fashion industry
-find a Northwest Passage
through Canada to transport goods from the Pacific to the Atlantic
-find good “whaling” grounds
for the French whaling industry
The tasks for this La Pérouse the Explorer Game are to:
-find all the stops La Pérouse made in the Pacific Ocean
before he vanished
-for the places La Pérouse explored see if there are
signs of French culture left in them today.
-the above task requires some
research into French culture. To make
that an easier task think of signs that you can see easily like French baguette
in a bakery window
-decide which of La Pérouse’s stops were for the French fashion fur trade or for the
whaling trade
-look up different species of whales and the
areas in the ocean latitudes they are located at.
-think about why whales at different latitudes
might be different from each other.
The French Huguenot historian Jules Michelet
(1798 – 1874) wrote whales at different latitudes in his book La
Mer (1861).
-where do the French still have colonies today
in the Pacific?
-are these French colonies on trading routes, by
historical whaling grounds, or by both
Working on these questions before, during, and
after you go on your whale watching trip and other historical whale industry
sites in Monterey County will make your sightseeing trip seem more like an
adventure story for you and your family, too:
Suggested Monterey County La
Pérouse the Explorer Field Trips
-visit the La Pérouse Memorial at the Carmel
Mission in Carmel, California and the Mission’s Museum
-vist the Whaling Museum at Point Lobos State
Park outside Carmel, California
-go on a whale sightseeing trip out of Monterey
or Moss Landing across from Elkhorn Slough
As a final note, I would add that my family
cleaned the brass plaque memorial to La Pérouse at the Carmel Mission about 6
years ago as a project for the Alliance Française of the Monterey Peninsula.
Maybe exhibits about the historical whaling
industry in Monterey would be good to have in the Carmel Mission, Point Lobos,
and Portola Plaza downtown.
This La
Pérouse the Explorer Game for a whale watching outing to the Monterey
Peninsula would be fun for a San Jose State librarian to run as a workshop on
gigmaster.com.
A San Jose State librarian could also add a
workshop on how to do reference online and with reference books to answer the
task questions.
La Pérouse the Explorer
Game: 6 Expansions by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget – suggested by Ruth Pennington Paget
Today
French scientists want to save ocean animals and coral reefs, especially after
the documentaries of Jacques Cousteau captured the beauty and fragility of the
oceans of the world.
In
these La Pérouse the Explorer Game expansions, you have 6 tasks to do for each
animal you can find in Monterey County (California):
La Pérouse the Explorer
Expansion 1:
-Look
up what kind of habitat (home) each animal needs to live, have children, and
raise children to adulthood.
-Once
you know the information above, look at the environment in Monterey County and
see how you could improve and/or maintain the habitat (home) for the following
Monterey County animals:
-sea
otters
-egrets
-brown
pelicans
-hares
(rabbits with long ears)
-harbor
seals
-hawks
-condors
(Watch a video about their habitat, home.
They hide.)
-monarch
butterflies
-starfish
(Have these been reintroduced yet?)
-bats
-bats
-deer
Answer
each of those questions above for each animal.
Use
an encyclopedia like World Book to do your research. Most libraries have this encyclopedia.
La Pérouse the
Explorer: Expansion 2
When
you visit Monterey County, buy a postcard of the animals listed above. (You can find postcards of many of these
animals all over Monterey County.)
Note
on the postcard what you think of the animal’s habitat.
Sample
Questions:
Are
the animal’s young safe?
How
is their food supply being affected?
Is
the color of the animal’s skin different from that on the postcard?
La Pérouse the Explorer
Game Expansion 3:
Make
a La Pérouse the Explorer Journal
-Paste
a photo you have taken or a postcard on the front of your personalized journal
and use calligraphy to call it “La Pérouse the Explorer Journal: Monterey
County.”
In
other parts of the world or California, the region you list will be different,
but this is a model for other regions to follow.
Inside
the journal, you can write notes abut what you learned about animals with
photos or postcards and what you did with your parents on your field trip.
You
can practice drawing animals in your journal and writing poetry as well.
La Pérouse the Explorer
Game Expansion 4:
La
Pérouse collected plants on his voyage around the Pacific Ocean to send back to
France.
You
have 2 tasks to do here at Level 4:
-Identify
the kinds of plants and trees that grow in the places that La Pérouse visited.
-Find
out how to get a plant from the South Pacific back to France for each plant you
identify above.
La Pérouse the Explorer
Game Level 5
-Read
the following books about sailing and the oceans
-After
you read a book, make a 2-page summary of the book to discuss why the information
is still important today with family and friends
Go
chapter-by-chapter and do at least 2 paragraphs per chapter
-Book
of Sailing Knots: How to Tie and Correctly Use over 50 Essential Knots by Peter
Owen
-How
to Draw Cool Ships and Boats: From
Sailboats to Ocean Liners by Fiona Gowen
-Learn
to Sail: A Beginner’s Guide to the Art, Equipment, and Language of Sailing on a
Lake or Ocean by Dennis Connor and Michael Levitt
Make
a word list of the equipment and define it in terms you understand:
Give
yourself spelling tests on the equipment words.
Then,
write the words out and write the definitions next to them.
Check
the definitions you wrote against your definition list.
-Draw
50 Boats, Ships, Trucks, and Trains: The
Step-by-Step Way to Draw Submarines, Sailboats, Dump Trucks, Locomotives, and
Much More by Lee J. Ames
-Sails:
The Way they Work and How to Make Them by Derek Harvy
-How
to Design Small Sailboats by Edward Clever Seibert
La Pérouse the Explorer
Game Expansion 6
Plan
a sailing or boating vacation on Lake Naciamento in South Monterey County where
the temperatures can reach 110 degrees in the summer.
-learn
the directional buoy system
-learn
how to sail with your parents
-learn
how to drive a motor boat with your parents
By
Ruth Paget, Author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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