Please feel free to use these activity ideas and curriculum-linked teaching notes in your classroom and home…  You can encourage your students to ask me questions or to share their work with me. I love to see it!

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Teaching notes, classroom ideas and activities…

Off The Track

Teaching notes and classroom ideas:

Make your own survival whistle activity sheet:

To The Lighthouse 

Teaching notes and classroom ideas:
(Plus check out these amazing To The Lighthouse classroom art and science ideas…)

Design your own holiday adventure activity sheet:

Cosmic Adventures of Alice and Bob 

Teaching notes and classroom ideas:

Takeshita Demons trilogy 

Teaching notes and classroom ideas:

Invent your own monster worksheet:

Activity ideas involving Japanese mythology and creative writing:

• Monster memory game
  Illustrated with scary artwork from 18th Century artist Toriyama Sekien, this monster memory game will test your memory and introduce you to some of the more obscure mythical creatures in Japan.
• Creative writing prompts
  Can you write a new ending to these traditional Japanese ghost stories? Download worksheets for MUJINA and THE MIRROR AND THE BELL story starters, both from 1903 text Kwaidan.
• Monster self-introductions: in English or Japanese hiragana.
  Invent and introduce a monster to your friends.
• Hiragana word search
  Test your hiragana knowledge and find the demons. Download a PDF of the worksheet and separate answers.
• Papier mache daruma
  Make a papier mache daruma and learn about a daruma’s eyes.
• Colouring in sheets
  Colour in a watery kappa or a firey hannya.

Science writing and journalism

When I’m not writing fiction, I get busy as a journalist, science writer and magazine editor. Check out some of my articles.