Activities for kids: the MONSTER fridge

I’m posting my latest activity for all of us kids big and small who are stuck at home. Today’s activity: Stocking a monster’s fridge!

We’ve all found some pretty scary things in the back of the fridge! Well, time to embrace all the grime and gruesome grub and imagine the contents of a monster’s fridge.

I’ve done this activity many times with my creative writing students—I usually post photos of past projects, but I’ve decided NOT to post any of the monstrous fridges I’ve seen over the years because I think, in this case, it’s better not to provide any further influence or inspiration. (Just let me say, I’ve seen some pretty grim  fridges over the years!)

What you will need:

• Paper to print out the template below.
• Pencils and coloring supplies.
• A strong stomach as you imagine all the gruesome grub!

Just download the template and start imagining (of course, you can just draw your own fridge)! By the way, I can easily start imagining what a human would think would be gross in a monster’s fridge. But what would be the grossest thing a monster would find in its fridge? Fresh produce? Hmm . . . .

This project also serves as a great story prompt. What if the monster looks in its fridge and can’t find its favorite food? What happens next? Does it throw a tantrum? Eat the fridge? Decide to just go visit its favorite restaurant, like Burger Thing or Dairy Scream?

Have fun with this one! Stay safe, stay well, and stay tuned . . .

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Activities for kids: Let’s get out of this place

I’m posting my latest activity for all of us kids big and small who are stuck at home. Today’s activity: Designing a brochure for an imagined world.

The truth is that when I was a kid, we didn’t go on a lot of vacations. A big reason for this is that I grew up on a family farm and the summer—when most people go on vacation—was the time for us to work really hard and earn the income that would sustain us for the rest of the year.

So, most of my “vacations” were taken through books—either by reading them or writing them.

Of course, reading or writing are great ways to escape NOW, during our world COVID-19 pandemic, but I want to provide a bit more focus with this activity. Who knows, it might turn into a book—or, if you have already written a book or story, this project can be a fun way to view your “world” from a different perspective.

I’ve delivered this activity several times with students at schools or programs I’ve worked at in Canada and Korea, and it’s proven to be a lot of fun.

The imaginary travel brochure

What you will need:

• Paper — you can use either blank paper or use the template I’ve provided
• Drawing supplies: Pens, pencils, colored pencils, fine-liners, markers—your preference!
• Optional: glue

The goal of this project is to make a three-panel tri-fold brochure, which you can do simply by folding a letter-sized piece of paper into thirds. That gives you three panels on one side of the brochure, and three on the other. You can do your brochure double-sided on a single sheet of paper, or if you are worried about your paper being too thin, and markers bleeding through, then just do this project on two separate pieces of paper, which you could always glue together afterward.

There are no real rules to how to fill out the pages, but I recommend:

SIDE 1

• Panel 1 (the cover): Cover art and title, such as “Come Visit . . .”
• Panel 6 (the back cover): Contact information.
• Panel 5: More information about the world the brochure is advertising—I like doing a “did you know” section here.

SIDE 2

• Panel 2: General information about the world, showcasing key points of interest.
• Panels 3&4: A bigger piece of artwork, such as a landscape of the world, or a map.

Of course, I highly recommend brainstorming the content and working on some rough copies before worrying about the final version. You can use your own blank paper folded into thirds, though if you want some content blocks to work with, then you can download my template HERE. You can also download and print out the template with the instructions, just in case you want something sitting in front of you to look at.

If you do print out my template double-sided, you may have to experiment with how your printer works—certain devices seem to flip the second page the wrong way!

Come visit these imaginary worlds:

I always have this rule in my creativity classes: If I ask YOU to do it, then I’ve also done it. So, here are two brochures that I’ve made! One is for The Land of Een, which is featured in my Kendra Kandlestar book series. The other is for the multiverse that appears in my Zoone series–because Zoone features so many different worlds, I decided to do that brochure a little bit differently!

Finally, here are some brochure examples done by past students.

Foodlandia:

Rainbow Island:

Land of Cute:

Ocean Kingdom:

I’d love to see what kids come up with! If you post them on social media, please hashtag #imaginarytravelbrochure and tag me (I’m @leefodi on Instagram and twitter).

In the meantime, stay safe, stay well, and stay tuned . . .

 

Activities for Kids: The BIG film of tiny things

I’m posting my latest activity for all of us kids big and small stuck who are stuck at home. So far, I’ve posted an activity to build a shrink ray and peg figures, handouts to map a miniature person’s journey across a room in the house, and the idea to survive a critter attack!

I’m going to finish off the theme by introducing one more idea connected to this set of activities: Making a mini-movie!

With all of the activities I’ve introduced, there is the opportunity for writing, but also other kinds of storytelling—because if you have been building and/or collecting all the props (shrink rays, peg figures, miniature tools, plastic critters), then you have pretty much everything to go to film your own miniature movie.

When I was a kid, I LOVED making movies . . . but all those thousands of years ago, we didn’t have the technology we do now! These days, it’s simple to film a few scenes and edit them in a program like iMovie.

However, what I always tell my students, is that filming and editing are the LAST parts of the process. Even though my kids so often want to jump into filming right away, I encourage them to sit down and consider STORY and what they want to tell.

It’s just like writing a book! My students have tons of energy when they sit down to write, but without a plan, they often get stuck and frustrated, then give up. My advice is to do some simple planning!

To be clear, I am NOT a filmmaker. But I have filmmaker friends and I have dabbled with making my own book trailers. Even for a thirty-second trailer, I spend a long time creating scripts and storyboards. So, if you’re going to take on this project, that’s what I really encourage you to do, too!

The Mini-Movie project

What you will need:

• Things to film (like shrink ray guns, peg figures, action figures, plastic bugs, and any number of household items!)
• A script and a storyboard
• A camera to film video
• A program to edit the video (like iMovie—but there are all kinds of apps available).
• One BIG imagination!

Here is the storyboard template that you can download:

And here is an example project! Several years ago, there was the “ice bucket” challenge to promote awareness for ALS. Everyone seemed to be making a movie—and harassing me to make one, too! I did want to support, but I am always loathe to just follow the crowd, so I decided to make a different sort of movie using the peg-figure version of myself and the various action figures in my studio.

Here is the storyboard I created first. This was helpful, because in some cases, I needed my wife to help with the filming. By looking at the storyboard, she knew what I wanted to achieve.

 

And here is the video itself . . . All the effects were practical—just tricks of perspective and angle to achieve the desired shot.

Have fun, everyone. I’ll post some other activities in the coming days. Stay safe, stay well, and stay tuned . . .

 

Activities for Kids: Small solutions for BIG problems

I’m posting my latest activity for all us of kids big and small stuck at home. So far, I’ve posted an activity to build a shrink ray and peg figures, along with the handouts to map a miniature person’s trek across a room in the house. It’s my attempt to make us perceive our current confined settings as bigger than they actually are!

Continuing the theme, I’m introducing another angle to this set of activities.

Creature Attack!

Whenever I’ve asked my students to map out an epic journey across a single room in the house, I then surprise them by springing a new challenge upon their characters: an attack by a deadly creature!

Well, it’s not SO deadly if you are normal sized, but for miniature characters, beetles, centipedes, and frogs are quite perilous!

What you will need:

• Paper and writing supplies
• Plastic critters (available at any dollar store, or also in your nearby toybox!)—spiders, snakes, beetles, grasshoppers, frogs, cockroaches—you name it!
• Small “tools”:
  • Buttons
  • Bottle caps
  • Coins
  • Drink umbrellas
  • Birthday candles
  • Plastic spoons
  • Popsicle sticks
  • Spools of thread
  • Toothpicks
  • Crayons
  • Clothespins
  • Elastic bands
  • Paperclips
  • In other words, anything you have lying around the home that a miniature character could “repurpose”

I like to begin this activity by putting all the critters in “Bag #1” then having the students picking one out “blindly.” This introduces an extra element of fun and surprise.

Then, I put all the “tools” into Bag #2 and ask the students to pick out two or three of them.

Now, we’ve got the problem (the critter) and the solution (the tool), and we just have to figure out how the character can use the tools to escape and survive. This is fun problem-solving!

If you’ve been following along with these activities and already mapped out the setting, then this confrontation with the critter can take place in that epic landscape (like in the middle of a shag-rug forest)!

At the very bottom, I’ve posted a handout so that kids can brainstorm some solutions. And here are some photos from some of the past classes where I’ve rolled out this project.

And here is the Big Problem — Small Solution handout:

If you have writers in your family, this set of activities provides a lot of inspiration! But I have one other creative output that you can do with this set of projects, which I will post in the coming days. Stay safe, stay well, and stay tuned . . .

 

Activities for kids: Small room—BIG world

It sure feels like our world is shrinking with the covid-19 crisis. We’re stuck at home, can’t gather, can’t visit.

Personally, I’m reverting to my age-old survival tactic: Disappearing as much as possible into my imagination.

As a children’s author and specialized arts and creative writing teacher, I’d like to help kids do the same, so I’m presenting some of my favorite activities.

Recently, I posted about building a shrink ray with household items. The bonus project was to imagine that every member of the family was shrunk by the device by building peg-figure versions of everyone!

Well, if you can imagine you’ve an inch or two high, then your world is now suddenly BIGGER. So, I invite you take the next (tiny) step . . .

Map your GIANT world

I’ve done this project with schools I’ve worked with in Canada, Korea, and Thailand, and will be posting some examples of my students’ past projects.

What you will need:

• Paper
• Drawing supplies: pencils, colored pencils, markers, crayons, fine-liners—whatever you like to use.
• Hey, I’m not going to stop you from using stickers or glitter either . . . but you know: the CLEAN-UP!
• A BIG imagination!

In this activity, you’re asked to imagine a single room in your house as an epic landscape that you have to cross as a miniaturized person. So, for example, a pile of dirty laundry might become “Mount Clothes” or a tipped-over soda can might become “Fizzy Falls.”

This is a fun way to think about perspective—and, also, to just imagine a bigger, vaster world.

Here are some examples of past maps—and at the bottom of this post, I’ve posted links to handouts that you can use to help with this project. I always find a bit of brainstorming helps at the beginning of every project!

Handouts

First of all, here is a map template.

Of course, you can do it on blank paper, but a whimsical frame makes everything more fun, if you ask me. (Also, I want to point out that this is the exact same frame I used for the map in Kendra Kandlestar and the Box of Whispers, which, by the way, is also about tiny people).

Here is a “Small Room — Big World” brainstorming sheet to help get you thinking about the types of items and pieces of furniture you might want to include in your map, and how to convert them into landscape items.

If you’re looking to add a writing project to do this—NO problem! Just imagine you have to navigate your way across this vast—and possibly dangerous—landscape! (Also, I’ll post a nice little wrinkle for you in a couple of days to make this epic journey even MORE fun!)

Stay safe, stay well, and stay tuned . . .

Activities for kids: Shrink Rays!

Does your family feel like the world is shrinking with all the shut-downs and closures due to covid-19? My family sure does! My wife has implemented a mandatory dance party each night to help keep our morale up—but there is still the rest of the day to fill up for us and our rambunctious son.

Thankfully, as a creative writing and specialized arts teacher, I’ve got a lot of “stuff” kicking around in the closet for various projects—and I want to share some of these activities.

In truth, of the stuff I build with my kids in my classes uses “junk”. I tend to save up all the lids and plastic bits that comes with various household items. They make for excellent building supplies.

I’ve done this project with classes in Canada, Korea, and Thailand—it’s a universal project that everyone can connect with.

So, for this project, you probably have most of what you need already in your house! So, if you want to make your world a little BIGGER, try building a shrink ray and imagine what it would be like to live in your house as a mouse-sized person!

The Shrink Ray Project

What you will need:

• Plastic bottles, soda cans, or any kind of container—even toilet paper rolls will do (and people have been hoarding toilet paper, so you might have a TON of those at your disposal).
• A low-temperature hot glue gun and/or white glue.
• Marker pens.
• Aluminum foil and scrap cardboard.
• Scissors.
• Bits and bobs—lids and snaps from various household items. Some containers (like glass milk bottles or the squeeze-fruit-paste my son eats) have the kind of lids that make for fantastic dials and switches.
• Brads (if you’re a scrapbooker, you might have these)—but otherwise you might be able to use thumbtacks, pushpins, or even screws.

Step 1: Gather all the supplies

In a formal class situation, I find it helpful for my kids to pick over all the supplies, choose what they want to use, then design what they want to build on a piece of paper.

Step 2: Draw

I always think it’s more fun—and successful—to have my kids draw what they want to build once they see what pieces that have to use. This can be done on just a plain piece of paper, or you can use the brainstorming sheet that I’ve prepared here.

Step 3: Build

Once the design is figured out, it’s just a matter of attaching all the pieces. I love building my props so that the button and switches move, but this requires a bit more patience and fiddling. Using a pushpin, you can push a hole through your average plastic lid, then attach it to the shrink ray base with a brad.

Otherwise, you can just attach all the buttons by using glue. You can use either a hot glue glue, which attaches items very quickly, but isn’t as durable, or white glue, which requires a lot more patience to allow for drying—but is more durable.

Bonus:

You can build miniature versions of your family using wooden pegs, scraps of cloth and felt, and buttons! That way, you can really visualize what it was like after the peskiest member of your family left the shrink ray ON and shrunk you all.

Another bonus:

If you have kids who love to write, well the shrink ray offers you a ready-made story starter! However, I often get my students to write a poem about what life is like as a miniature person, which is a good way to prompt imagination and perspective.

You can download my sheet!

 

 

 

Activities for Kids: Dragon egg building 201

Everyone is looking for fun home-based projects so I’m going to post some of the fun activities I roll out with my own family and the students in my creative writing and art programs.

I’ve already posted Dragon egg building 101, which involved a simple way to craft your own magical creature egg. This second approach is also pretty simple, but is better for older kids.

Dragon Eggs: The Hot Glue Gun approach

Obviously, it’s the hot glue that makes this a poor fit for toddlers! It also requires more patience, since it requires waiting for the hot glue to dry. This is the method that I’ve rolled out at many schools and programs in Canada, Korea, and Thailand—I’ve probably overseen hundreds of these eggs being made!

What you will need:

• Eggs (real, plastic, or cardboard)
• A low-temperature hot glue gun
• Black paint
• Metallic or glitter paint
• Paint brushes
• Mod podge

I’ll repeat here what I said about eggs using the sticker approach. You can use plastic or cardboard ones, which are highly available at this time of year from your local dollar or art craft store.

You can also use real eggs. In this case, you need to poke a hole in both ends, blow out the yolk, rinse the insides with hot water, then bake them at 325 degrees for twenty minutes to “cure” them. Real eggs are obviously more delicate than using the plastic forms, but they will work.

Once you have the eggs prepared, follow these steps . . .

Step 1: Paint the egg black

After a lot of experimentation, I have found this produces the best final result. By painting the eggs a base color of black, you provide a rich base and makes whatever colors you apply over top to be more vivid and vibrant. Because I have often done projects at schools where we needed to build a hundred eggs over a week, I often mass spray-paint a batch in advance, but black acrylic paint works just as well.

Step 2: Apply the hot glue

Once the egg has been given a base color, and the paint has dried, heat up the low-temperature glue gun and start applying it to the egg. You can almost paint it on with the nozzle of the gun, making different patterns and designs. I’ve tried swirls and wavy lines, but, honestly, you can apply it all kinds of random patterns because what you’re really trying to accomplish is make the egg look like it came from anything other than a normal bird!

You can see many of the different styles created by me and my students on this post. If you allow the glue to dry, you can start adding additional layers and build up certain features. I’ve even had students build horns and wings with the hot glue!

Step 3: Paint with metallic paint

Once the black paint is dry, apply your chosen final colors. I find that metallic paints are the best, because they provide the eggs with a magical appearance.

My main recommendation here is to paint lightly or to dry-brush the metallic paint on. This technique works especially well if you have pre-painted the base shell black (though, sometimes, my students apply so much glue, that there is no evidence of the original shell—which is okay, of course!).

You can also dry-brush on different layers or section of colors. If you don’t like the look of something, just paint over it and start again!

Step 4: Paint with mod podge

You can stop after Step 3, but I often like to seal the egg with a layer of mod podge, because it helps protect the paint and makes the egg more durable—which is important if, like my family, you want to plant them around your house or garden for a dragon egg hunt!

If you want your egg to be purely for display, you can always mount it on a base, such as a half-sphere styrofoam ball or, as one of my industrious students did, a cut plastic cup.

If you’re looking for something extra to add to this project, well then there is plenty of storytelling and writing you can do. In my creative writing classes, I often ask my students to write care instructions. You can download the project sheet here.

Activities for kids: Dragon egg building 101

Well, here we are, in the midst of the covid-19 crisis and my family is facing the same reality as everyone else—being stuck at home, climbing the walls, with no work or school. I work a lot at home (that’s the life of a writer), but I’ve also had many of my creative writing classes cancelled, which means all my students are stuck at home, too.

There is only so much Netflix to watch, so many books to read, so many games to play—so I want to introduce some fun hands-on activities to help keep hands and minds busy.

The first one is building dragon eggs (or, if you prefer, magical creature eggs). I’ve built tons of eggs over the years, ranging from very simple and small ones to ones that are giant and complicated. I build them as props to help me imagine key elements in my books, to help my creative writing kids to be inspired, or as for treasures to use in my family’s annual dragon egg hunt.

I’ve also helped hundreds of kids build them as part of my creative writing classes, my art therapy classes for at-risk teens, and in my writer/artist residences in Canada, Korea, and Thailand.

There are two simple approaches to making dragon eggs that you can roll out with your kids, and, in this post, I’ll introduce the first one . . .

Dragon Eggs: The Sticker Approach

This is the style that you can use with the youngest of kids. My two-year-old, Hiro, even made one of these—admittedly, I did the painting, but he did do all the sticking.

What you will need:

• Eggs (real, plastic, or cardboard)
• Black paint
• Gemstone stickers
• Metallic or glitter paint
• Paint brushes
• Mod podge

First, let’s talk about the eggs. You can use plastic ones from your local dollar store (at this time of year, they are highly available), or cardboard ones (usually found at a higher end art supply or craft store), or actual eggs.

In the case of real eggs, you need to poke a hole in both ends, blow out the yolk, rinse the insides with hot water, then bake them at 325 degrees for twenty minutes to “cure” them. Real eggs are obviously more delicate than using the plastic forms, but they will work.

Once you have eggs sorted, follow these steps . . .

Step 1: Apply the stickers

Once the egg has been given a base color, apply the gemstone stickers. The only issue here is that if you apply the stickers, then change your mind and peel them off, they won’t stick as well upon reapplication, and you may need to use white glue to keep them down.

The great thing about the sticker application is that you can do it really randomly (like my two-year-old) and still produce an interesting pattern that makes the egg feel more magical.

Step 2: Paint with mod podge

In truth, you can just paint the egg at this point with your metallic or glitter paint, but a coat of mod podge will really bind the gemstones to the egg form and ensure its durability.

Also, the mod podge works its way into all the cracks and crevices, filling them in and making the surface just a little less bumpy. Don’t worry, it will dry completely clear!

Step 3: Paint black

After a lot of experimentation, I have found this produces the best final result. By painting the eggs black, you provide a rich base and makes whatever colors you apply over top to be more vivid and vibrant.

Step 4: Paint with your chosen colours

Once the black paint is dry, apply your chosen final colors. I find that metallic paints are the best, because they really make the eggs look distinctive or interesting—in other words, magical.

I often like to dry-brush the metallic paint on rather than glop it on because, once again, it allows a vibrant and interesting finish. But there are no rules here! Some students like to leave the acrylic gemstones gleaming through.

From our recent hatchling workshop at the kitchen table, this is Hiro’s egg:

And this is mine:

I actually think Hiro’s looks better, with the dispersion of bumps and shapes!

Step 5: Seal

This step is optional, but I usually like to add another coat of mod podge, just to ensure the paint or jewels don’t chip off. You can also simply spray with a finisher (you can buy these at any art store), but I find mod lodge does the job just as well.

What’s next?

If you’re looking for something extra to add to this project, well then there is plenty of storytelling and writing you can do. In my creative writing classes, I often ask my students to write care instructions. You can download the project sheet here.

 

 

 

TD Book Week Tour ~ Day 2

Day 2 of my TD Canadian Children’s Book Week tour was a wild one, presenting four times in three different locations. Because of that I didn’t have time to get many photos—it was go, go, go!

But here is one of me at the end of my first presentation, courtesy of one of the teachers at Carruthers Creek Public School:

A very literary day

There was a very literary theme to my day—and not just because I’m an author on tour! I stayed over night in a town called Ajax and on my way to present at the local library, drove on Achilles Road. Obviously, there is quite a Greek Mythology theme here. At one other point, I presented at a school on Byron Road (I was tempted to take out a sharpie and add “Lord” on the street sign)!

Another theme to the day was that there was a lot of variety. Doing a tour like this can sometimes feel like your trapped in a recurring dream, in which you are doing the same thing over and over again. Since becoming a published author, I now understand why touring bands get tired of playing the same old songs over and over again. After awhile, everything can blur together and I often forget if I have already said something to a group, of if that was something said I mentioned earlier in the day.

But that was not a problem today! All of my presentations were very distinctive . . .

 

Ajax Public Library

My first presentation was at the local public library, which means the kids were coming from a nearby school. I had 125 Grade 3 kids in attendance. Once I arrived at the library, and was “on the ground” so to speak, I realized that my usual format wasn’t going to quite the right fit. The space was excellent, but it wasn’t exactly conducive to doing a brainstorming session.

Plus, my time was really tight—I had to make sure I ended right on time so that I could jump in the car and zoom to my next school. That meant that if the kids (who were coming from offsite) were even five or ten minutes late, then the whole thing would be too rushed.

On top of all this, the library tech was in a bit of a panic because the technology and hookups weren’t working. So, with all these factors floating around, I decided that “less is more” and made the call to drop the brainstorming activity and just focus on my presentation and Q&A.

As it turned out, the tech didn’t have anything to worry about because I have a Mac. Which means I simply plugged in my computer and—as always—ta da!

It also turned out that I had made the right call with the format. By the time the last group made it into the presentation space, we were ten minutes in. I jumped to it!

As has been a common thread on this tour, the kids were fascinated by my suitcase of magic stuff! If I actually start taking the offers I’m getting to purchase all of these things, I could probably retire—because when nine-year-old kids offer me four thousand dollars for my Zoone key, I can assume they’re good for the money—RIGHT?

By the way, I keep telling everyone that they don’t have to offer to buy my Zoone key. They can make their own! Mine was 3D printed by my friend Jeff Porter and he was good enough to supply the print file, which can be downloaded off The Secret of Zoone page on my website. The direct link to the 3D print file is here.

A character in a suitcase at Hatch House Montessori School

After presenting at the Ajax Public Library, I zoomed to a Montessori School in Whitby. This was an incredible 90-year old building that looks like a castle!

The inside was just as amazing, with rich wood paneling along the narrow hallways. I simply just didn’t have time to take photos; in truth, I would have loved exploring that building for a couple of hours. (I bet there are cool doors down in the basement!)

The great thing about this presentation is that it was very intimate, with only twelve students in attendance. So, I didn’t need to set up my computer and projector; I just simple opened up my wizard’s suitcase and started showing the kids my artifacts.

Afterwards, we handed out blank paper and I had the kids design their own suitcases. The previous day, at the Children’s Book Bank in Toronto, I had provided the kids with premade templates, but that was mostly because they were younger and sometimes a bit more structure can be more helpful.

But at Hatch House, I had more time and less students, so I led them through a more organized process. As they designed their suitcases, I had them think about what characters would own them. Many of the kids chose characters such as princesses, spies, pirates, or magical animals (we even had a half-human, half-dragon—a “dragonoid”).

One impish student, however, decided that the owner of her suitcase was ME. Based on this drawing, I need some dental work—STAT!

This activity is a lot of fun because it allows students to develop character (and story) from a different perspective—by SHOWING the character’s personality by the things he or she owns. (Writing teachers? We love to harp on our students about showing not telling.)

Enchanted trees and magical markets with Immanuel Christian School

After Hatch House, I jumped in my car, set my GPS, and roared off to the next school. Unfortunately, my GPS and my Google Maps print-out (because, yes, I like to have a back-up) were both convinced that the school was in Oshawa.

It is not.

It is also in Whitby—which means I went completely the opposite direction and got lost. To be fair to everyone (including me!) the school usedto be in Oshawa. I finally pulled over, rechecked some information and got turned around in time to make it to the school in time for both lunch and my presentations.

My first workshop was with the junior grades (1-5). In this presentation, I talked about enchanted trees and showed pictures of various trees that I have “collected” during my travels (don’t worry—I don’t take snippings! My collection just involves photos).

Afterwards, we brainstormed our own trees, including what the tree looks like, what it might grow, and who might live in it!

The kids came up with their own unique designs; as for the group tree, we ended up with a donut tree.

As you can see, he is really grumpy and doesn’t want to share his donuts, even though he has such nice rainbow-coloured leaves. Thankfully, there is a donut dragon living in his foliage, ready to swoop in and help weary and hungry travellers sneak a treat!

The second group was the tweens and teens. I showed them some photos of my visits to markets in Europe, Asia, Egypt, and Guatemala then we brainstormed our own magical shops, inventing all kinds of mysterious, arcane, or enchanted items that might be for sale. As you can see, the kids took great delight in populating the shop with different sorts of EGGS (because, as soon as you tell kids you can’t stand eggs, they go to town). Also, they added dragon poop. Yep, they went there. So, if you think about it, our market features the complete cycle of life.

Favourite question of the day

My favourite question from today was one I’ve never had before:  “Which book did you enjoy writing the most?”

I often get asked which book I like the most, but not which one I liked writing the most. I actually didn’t have an answer for this question! Each book involves its own unique challenges. I think I remember more of the emotional torment I feel while writing a book—not the positive stuff. There are certainly times when I’m writing that everything is flowing smoothly, but then I don’t think about it—I’m just going with that flow. But when something is going wrong—like I’ve just tumbled into a massive plot hole—that’s what I really remember!

Well, tomorrow will be a unique day on this tour. I’m spending the entire day at a single school! (Which, for those keeping track, really reduces my opportunities for getting lost.)

About Book Week

TD Canadian Children’s Book Week is the single most important national event celebrating Canadian children’s books and the importance of reading. Hundreds of schools, public libraries, bookstores and community centres host events as part of this major literary festival.

 

Propping up our stories: creating characters with prop-building

I’ve been doing a lot of prop-building lately—for example, crafting dragon eggs. Since prop-building is such an important part of my writing process, it’s something I like to bring to my students as well.

Getting away from the screen

One of the great things about prop-building is that it allows me to work on my book without staring at the screen. Let’s face it: Writing is hard and often exhausting. Sometimes, I feel like I have no words left in my brain, but I still have the desire to playin my world.

I’ve found that prop-building is a way to accomplish that. Working with tangible objects, working with my hands, has helped me to sort out plot problems. It’s kind of like doing the dishes and being suddenly struck by a eureka moment. Of course, when you wash dishes, all you get is clean dishes. When you build a prop, you get a tangible item from an imaginary world.

Nightmare Bottles

I’ve been working with a group of tween and teen writers this spring and one of the things I’ve tried to do is bring in the prop-building angle.

One of our first projects was to build “nightmare bottles.” This involves creating a character and metaphorically putting their fears in a bottle. Of course, this could provide fuel for a story in its own right, but the main purpose here was just to coax the kids into some brainstorming time.

Here’s some of their creations . . .

 

Character Kits

The main prop-building project I introduced this term was to create a personal kit for each character. This could also be metaphorical or could actually appear in the students’ stories. I’m big on inventing interesting “tools” for my characters and, especially if you are writing a fantasy book, I think you have a lot of opportunities to add extra sizzle to your story.

For this project, the students get to decorate and paint the kits themselves, then fill them with a variety of mini-props that fit their specific characters’ journeys.

This project has also tasked my students with a different approach to creativity. I’ve been trying to make sure they solve some of the problems they face.For example, one of my students wanted to build a spy kit with a gun. I looked around for toy guns and felt the creativity being sapped right out of me. I decided we could do something more original and unique. So, instead of buying a pre-made toy pistol, I bought tiny water guns and told the student to use it as a base for building something more unique.

He took one look at the brightly colored water guns and scoffed. I couldn’t convince him what a little paint a few cannibalized odds and ends could do. There was nothing I could do to change his mind, so I went home and built my own gun.

Admittedly, my gadget turned out part steampunk, part alien ray gun, but I hope I’ve made my point! And, now, I have something more unique and interesting that I can use—yep, I decided this can belong to a character who’s currently running around causing havoc in one of my own stories.

That’s the power of prop-building!