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How to Read an Animal Encyclopedia Together
If your animal loving kid wants to read an animal encyclopedia together, how to approach it? Here are some fun and light-hearted questions.
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Writing Activity: Describe a Fairground, Showground or Carnival
Have you ever been to a carnival? What about a rural show? A fairground? Circus? For sure you’ll have seen depictions of fairgrounds on TV and movies. They have a very specific vibe, and storytellers love them.
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Minorities always know more
Who doesn’t love a grand unifying theory? Today I present a unifying theory which describes infantilising discrimination towards minorities in all domains of human hierarchy:
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Why were New Zealand women first in the world to achieve suffrage?
If you know anything about New Zealand history at all, you probably learned that New Zealand women were the first in the world to achieve the right to vote in 1893.
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Writing Activity: Describe the Inside of a House
Describe a house, describe the inhabitants (or inhabitants since departed). Below are examples of house interiors from novels and short fiction. A RURAL COTTAGE IN 1950s ENGLAND The room downstairs at the front of this cottage would appear to serve Mr and Mrs Taylor as both dining room and general living quarters. It is a […]
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Make a Parody 1980s Goosebumps Book Cover With Stable Diffusion
People have been using Goosebump covers as spoofy templates for years. They look great wrapped around a hokey family photo. These are also great fun wrapped around an AI generated image because Stable Diffusion is very good at creating wacky, sci-fi worlds where something is just a little off.
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Writing Activity: Describe A Smell
Beginner writers are frequently told to make use of all senses when describing a setting. While this is a good place to start, keen readers will understand that there’s a time and a place to delve into the senses; some stories call for sensory lingering. Others don’t.
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How To Make A Children’s Picture Book With Photos
People have been using photos to make picture books for as long as people have had access to cameras. The small print-run picture book by Joy Griffins West and Anne Casey (age 5) was published in 1951. The book is a combination of black and white photographs interspersed with simple brush-line drawings done in a […]
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Writing Activity: Scene In A Restaurant, Café or Eatery
In this activity you will practice creative writing skills by writing a fictional scene which takes place in some kind of eating establishment: a restaurant, café, milk bar, fast food joint, Saturday morning market, street vendor… Any sort of eatery will do. But first, a pop culture quiz. How many of these cafes, diners and […]
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The Vertical Ladder by William Sansom Short Story Analysis
“The Vertical Ladder” is a short story by British writer William Samson (1912 – 1976) best known for his travel writing and highly descriptive language. A childhood game of dare goes wrong.
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Bunny Stew by Mikki Mares Short Story Analysis
Disney typically takes a nightmarish, harrowing fairy tale and bowdlerises it according to the more conservative end of its perceived audience. But lest we forget: In 1993 the Disney corporation also published a short story as disturbing as your typical pre-Grimm fairytales, replete with cannibalism. Disney had run a “Scary Tales” competition, and “Bunny Stew” was the winner.
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Writing Activity: Describe A Street At Night
A MIDLAND TWILIGHT The cloud-plumed afternoon has flown along the household street, Leaf-shadows flicker. Freshly strown, the sprays whir. Far and fleet, Hushed, furtive footsteps dodge and creep, and hunting voices call, “I spy,” and “One, two, three for you,” around the street’s still hall. The little winds of twilight blow. Upon the hop-scotch chaclk, […]
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Of Mice and Men: Classroom Alternatives
Of Mice and Men is a 1937 novella by John Steinbeck. Two migrant ranch workers move from place to place in California looking for work during America’s Great Depression. This social protest novel is widely studied with high school English literature students. But, where funding allows, English teachers are starting to replace class sets Of […]
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Evolution for Kids: Teaching Resources
Books for teaching evolution to children
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Writing Activity: Describe a Gallery or Museum
In any giant museum, your goal should be to spend 5+ minutes with 10 amazing works, not 5 seconds with 1,000. Less Wrong Header painting: Leroux Jules Marie Auguste (1871-1954) At The Cluny Museum
