The Let’s Make A Wreath book gives students a chance to choose decorations for a wreath, then see what the completed wreath looks like lighted and hanging up. I went crazy on this one, with three choices of bow (gold, white, red), three choices of plant trimmings (pine cones, holly, poinsettias), and three novelty decorations to choose from (candy canes, gold stars, snowflakes). If you remember your math, that’s 27 possible wreaths! Bonus: ALL the art for download!

I made several off line activities to go with Showertime! They include simple picture and word lotto, picture-to-word match, trace the word, and riddle clues to use with lotto or other activities. They are made with Boardmaker® using your pictures. –Alison Wade PDF version here 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.

Mountain Bike Race takes the reader to the top of a mountain and down the trails to the bottom on a mountain bike. The reading level is 3rd to 4th grade, but the story would interest older students as well. The reader sees the scenery from a bike rider’s viewpoint, and movies of the bike coming up the lift, the racers starting down, and the end of the race make this a vivid and real experience. Bonus: Collection of photos from the story, plus extra mountain scenes!

Feathers is a science activity explaining how birds and people use feathers. Movies let students see close-up views of birds in flight, a diving bird, and penguins walking about on the ice. Then photos of many different feathers challenge students to guess which bird they belong to. Each feather photo leads to a page with a photo and movie of the bird. Bonus: Collection of the bird and feather photos used and a set of off-computer match cards!

The interactive book Showertime! challenges the reader to find and place all the items needed to get ready to take a shower. To make the experience more interesting, the student reading and controlling the story actually goes into the shower, turns on the water, and sees and hears the water flowing, via animated movies. Bonus: Clip art collection from story!