Visiting A Petting Farm takes students on a virtual exploration. They can go to see all the animals on the farm in whatever order they wish. They also have a chance to feed and pet the animals, and when they do, they hear the sound the animal makes. When they decide to leave, students hear all the animals sound off together to bid them goodbye. Bonus: Puzzles and Photo collection!

Little Toot is a charming story about a real boat, a water taxi that operates in the Santa Barbara, California harbor. Readers get on board for a ride, with Little Toot pointing out everything along the way. Better yet, the reader drives the boat and has a chance to toot the whistle. Bonus: In the Credits page of the online version, there is a link to the real Little Toot’s web page!

The Tides Pools activity set includes so much material that I have broken it into two separate study units. The first unit, Tide Pools, includes Exploring Tide Pools and two supporting books. Exploring Tide Pools is set up so that students can wander through in any order, finding exciting discoveries along the way. The second unit, Tide Pools Writing And Review, includes the tests and three writing activities. Bonus: Vocabulary Cards and a Photo Collection!

Multi-Choice Test Templates includes Microsoft Word®, Clicker 5® and Classroom Suite® versions of templates I have developed to create the tests that become part of the activity sets here in the Attic. They are the result of much trial and error, and in their present form, they save me a great deal of time. So it’s time to make them available to you as well

Remember those wonderful Lincoln logs we played with? Here’s a chance to build a virtual log cabin. When it’s finished, students use the magic of their imaginations to go inside and see the furnishings of a real cabin. There’s a surprise when they look out the window and see a bear looking in! Bonus: Log Cabin Clip Art collection to download!

Ten Trucks uses photos and a “red fish, blue fish” style vocabulary to engage beginning readers and help them work with adjectives. There are all kinds of truck photos, ending with a very cool custom painted truck. Students use errorless and guided writing activities to work with adjectives. In the highest level writing activity, My Cool Trucks, students custom-paint their own cool truck images and write about them. Bonus: Lots of truck photos and clip art to download!

There’s a lot of talk recently about all the electronic and digital versions of books that you can find on the web. I decided to create a resource list of these electronic books to share with the parents. Some of the books have pictures and some do not. There are some that are appropriate for preschool, elementary, middle and high school as well as college age students. The list was created to give any child that can’t read in a traditional way, access to more literacy.

The Inventions activity set uses the story of the invention of Velcro® by George de Mestral to explore the process of invention and what it takes to be a successful inventor. The anchor book, How Things Get Invented, is available at two reading levels, grades 2-3 and grades 4-5. There are also comprehension tests and a Cloze Pro® activity. The final piece of the Inventions activity set are writing activities in both Classroom Suite and Clicker 5 format, entitled Could I Be An Inventor? Bonus: Vocabulary list with definitions!

In The Animals Game, a fun science activity, students pick an animal and make the computer guess its name. It’s really a test of the student’s grasp of animal characteristics, but with a twist so that the student runs the show. Students answer questions yes or no, and the computer quickly closes in on the answer. Bonus: Clip art collection and flow chart.