Label a Sea Turtle, Woolly Mammoth, or Allosaurus!

An example of one of the Common Core State Standards that pertains to learning vocabulary is CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text... Labeling a diagram requires linking the word with an image, which activates multiple pathways in the brain—always a good thing!

Another relevant standard is CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.7: Explain how specific images (e.g., a diagram showing how a machine works) contribute to and clarify a text.

I've created three printable labeling activities so far. As shown below, the artwork for these activities is realistic which I think is important for this kind of nonfiction material. Cute images are fun but can be misleading in a science education context.

Sea turtles are one of my favorite animals—it's truly amazing that these reptiles have been around for millions of years. The Label a Sea Turtle! diagram includes the vocabulary words head, eye, nose, beak, neck, flipper, shell, scute, tail, and scale. A second diagram of the sea turtle life cycle is also included with the words eggs, hatchling, beach, nest, female, tracks, adult, ocean, juvenile.

Click cover to download the preview in my TPT shop

Answer keys are included, naturally. It's perfect for Ocean, Marine Animal, and Reptile units. The species of sea turtle is the loggerhead, by the way.

The Woolly Mammoth is another wonderful creature that is included in Ice Age and Prehistoric units as well as ancient North American history. Label a Woolly Mammoth! has the words hair, eye, foot, leg, tail, tusk, trunk, ear, back, and head.

Click to find in my TPT shop

Last, but definitely not least is a fearsome meat-eating dinosaur diagram. Label an Allosaurus! can be used with Dinosaur, Prehistoric, or Predator units, and includes the words arm, back, claw, eye, head, leg, neck, tail, teeth, and toe.

Click to go to my TpT shop

I hope these activities will be useful to help kids learn about animals past and present.

If you're interested in an entertaining book about prehistoric life, please take a look at My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. The School Library Journal review says: ...the tantalizing facts and pictures in this book will stimulate readers' curiosity.

More information is on this page on my web site, or visit the book's page on Amazon: My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles & Amazing Facts

These FREE activities to go with the book are in my TpT shop at this link.

Thanks for stopping by!

Loreen
My Web Site

A “highly recommended” review (yay!)

My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles and Amazing Facts. Loreen Leedy (Author and Illustrator), Marshall Cavendish, 48pp, $17.99, 2010, ISBN 97807614557084.
 
Gr 3-5–Fascinating facts and entertaining illustrations combine to make this trip through prehistory a fun adventure for all. The author not only includes fun facts about the earth’s formation and its first inhabitants, but also incorporates some of this information in the format of a poem and/or riddle within each spread, making it all the more eye-catching and memorable for young readers. The layouts are artistically appealing, and the placement of the animals and their related facts within each period gives the reader a better understanding of how life forms have evolved. Science teachers and school librarians will want to have this in their collection, not only because of the educational value of the information, but also because of its unique presentation of facts and the graphic illustrations and simple depictions of various life forms through the ages. Teachers can use this to show how poetry can be used across the curriculum. One of the most important features of this book is the inclusion of the fun-factor, but they will also seek it out as a resource for various areas of study.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Library Media Connection 
Jan/Feb 2011

Click for the book’s page on my web site.

Click for a sliding puzzle of an archaeopteryx.

A flip-book preview of My Teacher is a Dinosaur

Originally I created this to go on my web site, on this page. A little flip-book is a really great way to let people browse inside your book, and you can choose which pages to include. Click on the right corner below to see it in action. [Update: if you’re reading this in Google Reader or similar RSS reader and don’t see a little book with flippable pages, please click on the post title and visit the blog to see how the flip-book works.)

So, how did I do this, you’re wondering? The book is laid out in InDesign CS4 and here are the steps:

To add the page curl to all pages, in the menu bar choose Window> Interactive> Page Transitions, and a little palette will open up.

From the drop down menu, choose Page Turn.

Click on the little symbol on the lower right to apply the effect to all pages.

In CS4 you can’t preview it (might be different in CS5.)

Now it’s time to export it. Choose File> Export, type in a name for the flip-book, select the SWF format and a destination for the Flash file and hit Save. Next the Export dialog box comes up:

I chose a 50% scale to reduce the size of the book, but other sizes will work so experiment. I wanted only a few pages, not the whole book, so Range is checked with the page numbers filled in. These were also checked: Spreads; Rasterize Pages; Generate HTML File; View SWF after Exporting (I’m not sure whether these all need be checked, really.) Be sure to check Include Page Transistions and Interactive Page Curl, obviously! The JPEG quality seems okay at Medium. If View SWF is checked, at least on my system it automatically opened in my web browser, Firefox. There you can play with the page turns and make sure the flip-book is working right.

One little wrinkle is that this book has some white pages, and on top of a white web page, it’s impossible to tell where the page corner is (to activate the page flip.) So, before exporting it from InDesign, I added a light gray rectangular border to the pages 12-19 (visible in screenshot) so the corner would be visible against white. You may wonder why I didn’t export starting with page 12? If you do that, it exports the entire previous 2 pages, also.

If you don’t typeset your own books (not many illustrators, do) it should be easy for the publisher to provide a SWF file, assuming they use InDesign.

Then, how to get it on a web page? Naturally, that varies with the software used. In Dreamweaver, the SWF file is copied into the root file of the site. Then on the web page, draw an AP DIV box, and under file menu choose Insert> Media> SWF. Then, because the page flip extends outside of the dimensions of the book, I added about 60 pixels to the height of the bounding box. The flip-book will still work if you don’t do that, the animated pages will just be a little cut off.


How did I get it onto this blog? Blogger won’t accept Flash directly, so the file has to be somewhere else (in my case, it’s on my web site.) In Blogger, I pasted this HTML code into the Edit HTML tab:
<embed height="420" pluginspage=" http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://www.loreenleedy.com/Dino.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="576"></embed>

You would have to replace my web URL and SWF file name with your own. Your Height and Width values probably will be different, too. This flip-book might be a little too big for my Blogger layout, but it’s perfect for my web site, so I left it as is. Hope the page turns work here on the blog, I’ll find out after this post is published!

My Teacher is a Dinosaur reviews

School Library Journal has this to say about My Teacher is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts:

Gr 2-5–Organized chronologically, this collection zips through prehistoric times, starting about 4.5 billion years ago when “a new planet was formed.” Each page hits the highlights of a period, focusing primarily on living things. “Let’s go to the Cretaceous/ inside a time machine,/ the creatures are voracious, /excitable and mean.” The digitally drawn and painted illustrations are all captioned and include pronunciations. Varied fonts help to keep the busy pages organized so that the poetry is distinguishable from riddles, etc. An excellent time line helps put everything into perspective. An introductory note reminds readers that the dates are estimates and facts are subject to change with new discoveries. Overall the tantalizing facts and pictures in this book will stimulate readers’ curiosity.–Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA

And here is the review from Booklist: 

Gr 3-5–This colorfully illustrated book takes readers on a tour through prehistoric times. Combining poems, jokes, and riddles with tidbits of information, it opens with the formation of the earth 4.5 billion years ago; traces the arrival of various plants and animals; and concludes 150,000 years ago, when the fossil record shows that modern humans as well as woolly mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths walked the earth. The verse forms vary from one double-page spread to the next, with plenty of limericks and rhymed couplets. The riddles include such child-pleasers as “Q. Why didn’t the mammoth work in the school cafeteria? A. The hairnets weren’t big enough!” Readers initially drawn to the pictures of strange creatures or the jokes may find themselves reading the captions and poems as well. Teeming with digital drawings and paintings of creatures great and small, the pages are a bit busy, but lively. Useful for its inclusion of prehistoric life before the dinosaurs, this makes a good addition to many collections.

Booklist 

November 1, 2010

And from Kirkus:

Gr 3-5—What do you get when you combine punny jokes and riddles with diamond poems and rhyming verse? When it’s from Leedy, you get a whole lot of learning (just don’t tell the kids). Her latest introduces readers to the history of the Earth and its plants and animals. Children will have no problem following the succession of life through the pages, from the beginnings of the Earth, with bacteria making oxygen and life in the sea, to the early insects, first forests and dinosaurs that covered the land. Each spread presents one topic with a poem conveying the primary information; surrounding that poem are goofy riddles, factlets and question-limericks that expand on it. The pages are unapologetically jam-packed with information, but they never overwhelm. Lots of smaller pictures make up each spread, creating a visual flow for the facts (there is a disclaimer about habitats and exact time periods). Backmatter shows a timeline from Earth’s formation to the present day. Prehistoric time was never this much fun.
 

Kirkus 

August 15, 2010

Receiving such positive reviews from these three important publications is not easy, so yay! Previous posts about this title can be found here.

Poetry Friday: Prehistoric Poems

This book begins with a brand-new, molten Earth 4.5 billion years ago then takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the history of life...much of it conveyed in the form of poems, cinquains, and limericks. Exclusively for today’s Poetry Friday, here a few samples from My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts:

©2010 by Loreen Leedy

I had fun writing riddles in the form of limericks such as this one on page 11:

©2010 by Loreen Leedy

The answer to the riddle is...Insects! They were the first creatures on earth that could fly. 

Most spreads have a longer verse, such as this one on page 16:

©2010 by Loreen Leedy

©2010 by Loreen Leedy

Perhaps as a side effect of writing and illustrating quite a few math picture books, I felt compelled to compile some poetic statistics for this book:
Cinquains: 6
Limerick riddles: 14
Verses: 20

Some titles of the longer poems include:
The Bad Old Days
Plant Pioneers
The Fish That Wanted Legs
How to Stay Alive
Did Hadrosaurs Quack?
A Warning from the Mammals


Oh, I almost forgot to mention how many jokes are in the book...zillions! For example:
Q. Why did T. Rex eat the teacher? 
A. He was hungry for knowledge!

To see a full spread from the book plus reviews, please click here.
To see its page on Amazon, click this link: My Teacher Is a Dinosaur: And Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles & Amazing Facts 

Loreen
My Web Site

This post is such a joke

[This article is adapted from one originally posted on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) on October 15, 2008. At the time, I was doing research for what became this year’s Fall book, My Teacher is a Dinosaur. Only one of these jokes ended up in the book as it turned out. Maybe there needs to be a sequel...!]


For some odd reason I recently began writing riddles and jokes about invertebrates, among other creatures:

Q. Why are anemones so popular?
A. The anemone of my anemone is my friend.

Q. Why are tubeworms so shy?
A. They‘re introvertebrates.

Time travel came up... temporally, at least:
Q. What’s the most common way to time travel?
A. Throwing the alarm clock at the wall!

Q. Why is time travel so confusing?
A. I already told you that next week!

Astronomy tried to take on a starring role:

Q. What do you call a mean meteor?
A. A nasteroid!

Q. How does the Earth say good-bye to the Moon?
A. Later, crater!

If there‘s an award for awful jokes, I hope to win it. It’s been about twenty years since I last grappled with similar material, and then to do just the illustrations for David Adler’s The Dinosaur Princess. So, how do you write a riddle or joke, anyway? Here's one method:

1. Choose a subject, let‘s say mammoths. List words that describe how they looked, their behavior, their habitat, and so on.
hairy trunk trumpet tusk snow ice huge big bones big teeth, etc.

2. Think of rhymes, similar-sounding words, and/or words that contain the word:
HAIRY scary contrary fairy canary very necessary Larry
SNOW go know no slow slowpoke snowflake
TRUNK junk chunk clunk skunk truncated

3. Use these ideas to write a rhyming, nonsensical, or goofy possible answer:a scary hairy fairy
a snowpoke

4. Make up a question that gives a hint of the answer:

Q. Why were baby mammoths afraid of losing a tusk?
A. Because of their hairy scary tooth fairy!

Q. How fast did mammoths walk in winter?
A. They were snowpokes!

5. Try variations on classic joke formulas:

Q. How many mammoths did it take to change a light bulb?
A. None because there were no lamps in the Ice Age!

Wording the question and answer carefully will maximize the effect. For a real challenge, once you get good at writing regular riddles, try incorporating one into a poem or limerick. (I’d show a sample, but have to save them for the book.)

One book for kids about how they can write their own jokes is Funny You Should Ask: How to Make Up Jokes and Riddles with Wordplay by Marvin Terban. He has written over thirty books for kids about various types of wordplay.
I ran across This Book is a Joke by Holly Kowitt in a used book store, and find it especially funny for some reason. It covers a ton of topics from pets to school lunches to the eight types of classmates. Mostly text, it does contain a few delightfully goofy cartoons. Note the award seal on the cover which proudly proclaims: This Book Won Nothing.

The world of nonfiction has a lot of potential gold for the enterprising humor prospector... because you have know some facts about a topic in order to be able to make fun of it. And that’s no joke!

Disclaimer: It’s possible somebody has already thought of some of these jokes/riddles... I came up with them on my own, but people have been kidding around for a long time!

My Teacher is a Dinosaur on I.N.K.

The I.N.K. blog (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) is back after an August hiatus with plenty of interesting articles about nonfiction books. Please visit this link to read my post, Time for prehistory. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of “infographics”... it’s pretty much what it sounds like, just simple graphics that visually convey information. Anyway, I used a few simple ones to help make my point, that while there are a zillion books about dinosaurs, what about the rest of prehistory?

Happy reading!

My Teacher Is a Dinosaur free coloring page

Yesterday I received copies of my fall picture book and they look great. The full title is My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. It takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the history of life on Earth starting 4 1/2 billion years ago... not bad for only 48 pages, right? For more info including reviews, please check out this page.

These previous blog posts tell a little about the behind-the-scenes activity. I also wrote about doing the research for this book on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) here and here. Last but not least, here is my I.N.K. post about how to write jokes and riddles.


I haven’t forgotten about the coloring page... here it is!

Click on the image to enlarge it then print it out with a horizontal orientation and get out your crayons. (Did you know there is a Crayola set with 96 colors!?!) Or drag it off the web page to your desktop. Feel free to send it to any kids you know that love dinosaurs. If anyone sends me a photo of a colored-in page, I’ll post it here. Or, post it on my author page on Facebook!

Thanks, y’all!

[Note: This post also appeared on my studio blog... I’m in the middle of transitioning all my book-related posts to this blog. I’ll be reprinting some I.N.K. posts also in case readers didn’t see them the first time around.]