THANK YOU for all that you do to make children’s lives the best they can be. I invite you to take a spin around this page. It’s loaded with book-centric activities, professionally curated teacher guides, projects, and other fun things—like yummy book-related recipes! All the content is free and available to you and your classroom, library, or home school. Also, I often add new options to this page, so please do stop in again soon.
To reading!
Carmela
Activities and Teacher Guides
See Activities for:
Anyone Else Awake?
Activity:
How to make Birdseed Biscuits—for our feathered friends
Supplies
- 2/3 cup of boiling water
- 2 packets of gelatin (generic brand)
- 2 cups of bird seed
- Paper plates
- Cookie cutters (Dollar store)
- Straws (cut in half)
- Wax paper or parchment paper
- Large bowl & wooden spoon
- jute or string
Adult supervision required!! Open contents of 2 gelatin packets into a large mixing bowl. Pour 2/3 cups of boiling water over the top and whisk quickly until gelatin dissolves.
Add bird seed and stir well with a wooden spoon. The bird seed should be well coated with gelatin.
Place favorite cookie cutter onto a paper plate. Begin spooning the seed mixture into the cookie cutters. Occasionally press down with a piece of wax paper or spoon. Add more seeds until the cookie cutter is over-flowing with seeds. Press down again.
Carefully poke the straw all the way through the seeds to create a hole, making sure the hole isn’t too close to the edge of the cutter. (This will be where you thread the string later on.) Leave the straw in place. Place the paper plates in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours. When set, remove the paper plates from the fridge. Gently pull out straw, making certain it poked thru to the other side. Next allow biscuits to dry before removing the cookie cutter. Turn the cookie cutters over and allow to draw out for a few more hours. Or better yet, let them sit out overnight.
Carefully remove the cookie cutters. Thread string/jute through the hole. Now it’s time to hang your new birdseed biscuit outside!
Not for human consumption!
The Tumbleweed Came Back
Click here to download the Teacher’s Guide.
Activity:
How to Make Tumbleweed Energy Balls
You will need:
- 1 cup quick oatmeal
- 1/2 cup smooth almond butter
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1 cup small coconut flakes
- 1/2 cup ground flaxseed
- 1/2 cup (or more)mini chocolate chips
- 1 tsp vanilla
Thoroughly mix ingredients together. Place in refrigerator for 15 minutes. Remove from fridge and form into bite-size balls. Roll in extra coconut.
Refrigerate. Makes approximately 20 balls.
Something Spectacular, A Rock’s Journey
Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots?
Bring Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots to your classroom with top-notch lesson plan ideas plus fun activities created by Marcie Colleen. All the major subject areas are covered: ELA, math, social studies, science, history, plus more! All for FREE!
Activity:
Click here for Daisy Crowns or Super Hero Bands step by step instructione.:
Activity:
Hot Cocoa
Just about everyone loves a warm mug of cocoa. Here’s the perfect recipe for after a nice long hike. Yum!
Activity:
Activity:
Do Princesses Really Kiss Frogs?
Activity:
Here’s everything you’ll need to make cute little companions to Do Princesses Really Kiss Frogs?
Frog Finger Puppet or Bookmark
You will need:
- Felt (green for body & red for mouth)
- Googly eyes
- Scissors (with adult supervision)
- Thread and needle (ask for help!) OR craft glue or low temp hot glue gun
- Create a frog pattern or use the pdf provided.
- Trace the pattern onto felt. Cut out frog body shapes and mouth.
- Begin sewing or gluing the frog body pieces together as shown.
- Glue on googly eye. Your frog finger puppet is ready to listen to a reading of Do Princesses Really Kiss Frogs?
Brown Bear Finger Puppet or Bookmark
You will need:
- Felt (brown or black, white)
- Googly eyes
- Scissors (with adult supervision)
- Thread and needle OR Craft glue or low temp hot glue gun
- Create a bear pattern or use the pdf provided.
- Trace the bear pattern onto felt. Cut out bear body shapes
- Fold over main body and sew or glue the sides together.
- Glue snout and ear pieces into place. See photo above.
- Glue on googly eyes.
Grrrrrrreat, now you’re all ready to read!
Can you find the brown bear and frog in Do Princesses Really Kiss Frogs?
Do Princesses and Super Heroes Hit the Trails?
Activity:
A Few Words About Pollinators
Bees, Bats, Butterflies, Bugs, and Birds make up the earth’s most important pollinators. Scientists call this superhero group, the “Five B’s”. Of course there are other superhero pollinators, such as animals, wind, and water. But they don’t start with the letter “B”, so there’s that!
Pollinators work to make sure we have flowers, fruit, grains, and vegetables, as well as most everything in the plant world, including soil.
When pollinators visit flowers and flowering plants, they capture pollen on their bodies. Then when they fly or crawl off to visit other flowers, they drip the collected pollen into those flowers. If the conditions are right, the pollen fertilizes the flower, and then eventually the plant will make more flowers!
Bees happen to “be” one of the most important pollinators on Earth! It’s likely all of our 63 National Parks are visited by pollinating bees at some point during the year.
The hiking boot princess and her brother visit twelve of USA National Parks in Do Princesses and Super Heroes Hit the Trails, and of course they are always looking for fun craft projects.
Now you can make your own pipe cleaner bumblebee too! See below.
Activity:
Cutest-Bumblebee-Ever
You will need:
- 3 pipe cleaners (various colors)
- 2 googly eyes
- Low temp glue gun
Hold two pipe cleaners side by side and begin twisting them into on twisty pipe cleaner. It will now look like a 2-color striped pipe cleaner.
Next, wrap the double pipe cleaner around your index finger (pointer) so it resembles a coil. Important: wrap the pipe cleaner tightly, but not too tight so that you can’t slide it off your finger!
Gently slide the coiled pipe cleaner off your finger. It should (sort of) look like a fluffy bee. For the head, tuck the most narrow end in just a little.
Glue googly eyes onto the head—the narrow end.
Next, tuck in the bottom end.
For bee wings, with the help of an adult, cut the 3rd pipe cleaner in half. You will only need one half for the wings. Holding the pipe cleaner, bring each end to the middle forming what looks like a bow or wings. Gently twist this pipe cleaner ends at the middle so the wings stay in place.
Slide the wings into the bee’s body. You now have one of the cutest bees ever!
Can Princesses Become Astronauts?
Activity:
Power Thoughts: A powerfully fun activity to do anytime!
What are Power Thoughts?
At the beginning and end pages of Can Princesses Become Astronauts, there are 20 Power Thoughts geared for all ages. They are my favorite part of the book.
Power thoughts are the princess’s gentle reminder to believe in herself, to be kind, and brave. Here’s an example of a page from the book.
Wouldn’t it be fun to create your very own powerful thoughts and write them inside clouds? Thoughts like “share brightness”, “smile at dogs”, “make a wish” . . . or whatever you come up with.
How to make a Power Thought cloud:
Download and print the Cloud Page pdf
- Think about what you would like your power thoughts to be.
- Write your thoughts inside the clouds.
- Don’t worry if your words spill outside the cloud lines. Clouds are super cool with that.
- Cut out your clouds. Or leave the page whole and frame it or put it on the fridge with a magnet.
How to use your Power Thoughts:
- Tape clouds to a board or mirror as a lovely reminder of how powerful YOU are.
- Grab your crayons and color in your clouds in whatever colors strike your fancy.
- Leave one or more clouds in a book at the library, as a random act of kindness, for someone else to find.
- Give or mail a Power Thought cloud to someone who might need some cheering up.
Do Super Heroes Have Teddy Bears?
Activity:
How-to-Make Do Super Heroes’ Capes for Teddy Bears
- Flannel 10” X 12” (color of choice)
- Felt (various colors)
- 18-22 inch shoe string*
- scissors
- glue
- needle & thread
Fold 10” X 12” flannel piece longways. With the help of an adult, round the corners on one end with scissors. Open the fabric. The top of the cape should have a square edge, the bottom edges of cape should be rounded.
Fold under the top of the cape (squared off edge) by 1 1/2” to create a tube. Stitch close to the salvage edge, leaving enough room for the shoe string to thread through the tube. Design your own super hero emblem with felt. With the help of an adult, cut and glue the emblem into place.
Next thread the shoe string through the tube. You are ready to tie the cape onto your super hero teddy bear or other plush toy.
*If you prefer to use velcro instead of shoe string, simply add a tape of velcro to the upper corners of the cape.
Activity:
Super Hero Emblem
What IS a super hero anyway?
It’s probably safe to say they are brave and bold and kind and caring.
Well, most of them.
If you could make up your very own super hero, what and who would it be? What would be his/her/their name? What powers would she/he/they have? The sky is the limit.
Print your own super hero template here. Color your own emblem using crayons or markers. Send me a note—I’d love to know your super hero name.
Activity:
Super-Hero-Name-Game
Use this chart to find your new super hero name—just for fun!
Column 1: Find the first (or last) letter of our first name to discover the first part.
Column 2: Then find first (or last) letter of your middle name to find the second part.
Column 3: Find the first (or last) letter of your last name to complete it all.
Mine is Poofy Lightning Blaster!
Activity:
Super-est Toy
We all know one of the best toys for a child is a cardboard box! You will need to provide kid safe scissors and tape too, but you won’t regret all the amazing contraptions your kids will create…or you’ll co-create with them!
Wild Zoo Train
Activity:
Illustrator Steve Gray put together an awesome activity kit that goes along with the book!