Activities and Lesson Plans
Below you’ll find links to projects and lesson plans geared around my books. They are suitable for a wide variety of grades and class sizes, and each activity can be printed or downloaded for later use.
Many of these activities are here courtesy of some amazing teachers. (If you have a project that you’d like to share, please let me know.)
Mad Scientist Academy
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Dinosaur Disaster Educator and Parent Kit
MULTIPLE GRADES
The good folks at Random House have produced this cool Educator and Parent Kit full of activities and lesson plans to accompany The Dinosaur Disaster, including Common Core state standards correlations and STEM connections.
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Weather Educator's Guide
MULTIPLE GRADES
Random House also produced this educator’s guide, full of activities and lesson plans to accompany The Weather Disaster. It includes Common Core state standards correlations and STEM connections.
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Make Your Own Mad Scientist Academy Handbook
GRADES 2 AND UP
Make your own Mad Scientist Academy Handbook full of dinosaur facts with just one sheet of paper! Just download the PDF below, print it out, and follow the easy instructions. So simple even a mad scientist could do it.
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Dinosaur Mixup Handouts
MULTIPLE GRADES
Dr. Cosmic’s invention went out of control and put the wrong dinosaur parts together! Use your Mad Scientist Academy Handbook (see above) and identify the dinosaur head, body, and tail and see if you can sort them out, then color the dinosaur and tell its story. (Contains 27 different variations and a teacher’s answer chart.)
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Mad Scientist Inventor's Notebook
GRADES 1 AND UP
In Mad Scientist Academy, the teacher, Dr Cosmic, makes inventions to try to solve a problem, such as, “How did the prehistoric dinosaurs live?”
Print this page from a Mad Scientist Inventor’s notebook and design your own invention. Are you a better mad scientist than Dr. Cosmic?
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Dinosaur Disaster Scavenger Hunt
In the book Mad Scientist Academy: The Dinosaur Disaster, Dr. Cosmic sends the students to search the dinosaur exhibit for clues to a puzzle. Now it’s your turn to search!
The Lion’s Share
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Pastry Party
GRADES 2-4
Pastry Party uses a toaster pastry and pretzels to teach fundamental fraction concepts. And as a bonus, at the end, everyone gets to eat!
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So Dang Fun
MULTIPLE GRADES
Julie Dang has created a whole page of terrific projects and activities all based on The Lion’s Share. You can find them at her website, So Dang Fun!
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Classroom Book of the Week
MULTIPLE GRADES
Kate Narita has a number of great Lion’s Share projects and activities on her blog, focusing on engaging multiple intelligences. (Bodily/Kinesthetic, Verbal/Linguistic, and Logical/Mathematical, etc.)
Bean Thirteen
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Flora's Magic Disappearing Bean
ALL AGES
This puzzle is inspired by a classic nineteenth century puzzle called “Get Off the Earth” by American puzzlemaker Sam Lloyd. Print this puzzle, cut out the pieces, and try to figure out how swapping two halves of the set of beans magically turns thirteen into twelve.
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Bean Math
MULTIPLE GRADES
Bean Math is a series of projects that use beans to explore concepts of odd and even numbers, division, remainders, fractions, and prime and composite numbers. Students play the parts of Ralph and Flora, inviting guests to dinner. By investigating which numbers of beans divide evenly among the guests, rules and patterns begin to emerge.
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No More Beans!
MULTIPLE GRADES
For this activity, students select the appropriate parts of speech with the right number of syllables to complete a poem about Ralph and Flora. This project can be done as a classroom activity (for younger students) or in pairs (with older students).
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Invite a Bug to Dinner
MULTIPLE GRADES
In the book, Ralph and Flora invite a variety of different bugs over for dinner. If you were having a bug dinner party, who would come?