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: 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 . . .