For Educators – Pictish Beast Publications

***New for 2019***: We are now in the process of producing and publishing Classroom Editions of our Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia books specifically for educators which are in an A4 format which can be easily photocopied to create classroom handouts, and which provide a range of additional materials. You can find out more about these classroom editions by clicking here.

This page is for educators who wish to use our children’s educational books in their classrooms. Below you will find suggestions for additional classroom activities to accompany each of our children’s educational books. In addition, to allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom by photocopying sections of our books, we also provide the option for you to purchase an educational licence for each of our books (the cost of this licence is in addition to the cost of purchasing the books themselves, and you must own a hard copy of the book for the licence to be valid). This licence allows you to make as many photocopies as you like for as long as you still own a hard copy of the book, and as long as they are only used in your personal classroom. If you would like to discuss the possibility of obtaining a multi-user educational licence (e.g. for all teachers in school, or all schools in a educational authority), please email info[at]pictishbeastpublications.com with the subject line: Multi-user Educational Licence Enquiry.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Series

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Mammals by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-39-8)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

If you have the space, mark out a line that is the same length (30 metres) as a blue whale (the largest mammal in the world). Now get your class to compare themselves to this length in as many different ways as possible. How many students holding hands can make a chain as long as a blue whale? How about if they are lying down head-to-toe? How many steps would it take to walk the length of a blue whale? If you wish, for this exercise, instead of just a line, you can draw a life-sized outlined of a blue whale. You can download a schematic which will show you how to easily draw out a life-sized blue whale from here.
Draw out a life-sized outline of a blue whale and calculate its total area by dividing it up into a series of triangles and rectangles and adding the areas of these individual shapes together. You can download a schematic which will show you how to easily draw out a life-sized blue whale in your playground using triangles and rectangles from here.
If you have access to suitable scales, work out the total weight of your class, and help your class calculate how many similar classes would be needed to weigh the same as a blue whale (173,000 kilograms).
Explore the speeds that different mammals move at, and find out what species of mammals your students could beat in a race. This is best done over a distance of 30 metres (the length of a blue whale). To start, mark out this distance and then divide your students into two or three groups. Have the first person for each group run as fast as they can over 3 metres and time how long it takes them each to do this using stop-watches. Compare the time they take to do this with the times it would take other mammals run the same distance using the table you can download from here. Once you have done this, do the same with the next student in each group and repeat until all the students have done one sprint. End by making a graph showing the different mammals the students in your class could beat in a race, and which they couldn’t.
Make masks of mammals of different colours and hold a mammal fashion parade.
The longest lived mammal can live for more than two hundred years. Draw a timeline starting today and going back two hundred years. Have your students mark on it the dates of key points in human history that have occurred over this time (such as the end of the Second World War) and/or key human inventions/innovations (e.g the invention of the jet engine, the car, the first powered flight and so on) to help them understand just how long this is. Alternatively, you could get them to add on their dates of birth and the dates of birth of their oldest living relative on this timeline.
Investigate how different mammals move. Get each student to pick a mammal and then demonstrate how they move while moving round the classroom, gym or playground.
Work out the total number of students in your class/year/school and create a way to visualise this (e.g. make a bar chart or fill a bowl with the same number of M&Ms). Next, create similar visualisation for the total number of vaquita (30), Javan rhino (60) and Amur leopard (fourty) left in the world, and compare this to the total number of students. Are there more students in your class/year/school than there are vaquita left in the world? What about Javan rhino and Amur leopards?
The world’s fastest mammal is the cheetah, and it can run at up to 112 km/h (70 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. How does the speed of your fastest student compare to a cheetah? Would they be able to beat one in a race? Challenge your students to find out the speeds that other mammals can move at, and see which one is closest to your fastest student.
The world’s slowest mammal is the three-toed sloth. It would take them six minutes to cover twenty four metres. Measure out this distance, and have a slow race to see whether any of your students can move a slow as a sloth. The rules for a slow race are that each student must continually move forward in a straight line for the duration of the race. This means they cannot stop, go backwards or go sideways. Last one across the line wins.
Cuvier’s beaked whales are the mammalian breath-hold record-breakers. They can hold their breath underwater for more than two hours. Challenge your students to see who can hold their breath the longest and see how this compares to a Cuvier’s beaked whale. The best way to do this is to get them to hold their noses to avoid accidental (or purposeful!) cheating.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Birds by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-41-1)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The biggest living bird in the world is the ostrich, and they can be up to 280 centimetres tall. On a wall, mark out this height and then get each student to compare their height to the height of an ostrich. Are they as tall as it? What about if they reached up with one or both hands? How about if they jump? What about if they stood on a chair? Or sat on someone else’s shoulders?
The wingspan of a wandering albatross can be up to 365 centimetres long. Mark this distance out on your classroom floor and see how this compares to the outstretched arms of your student. How many students would need to join hands to form a chain as long as an albatrosses wingspan?
Find a picture showing the skeleton of a bird (like a chicken) and a Tyrannosaurus rex and use them to create a hand-out. On this hand-out, get your students to draw lines connecting the same bones in the bird and the dinosaur skeleton. This will help show them how similar the two are, and that most of the differences between birds and the therapod dinosaurs they evolved from are purely superficial.
Create a collection of feathers from different birds, or from different parts of a bird, and use them to explore the structure of feathers and how different feathers with different functions (e.g. flight, streamlining, and insulation) have structures adapted to these different functions.
The biggest bird that ever lived is the giant moa. When alive, it would have stood at up to 3.6 metres (or 360 centimetres) tall. Mark this out on a wall, and as with activity one, get your students to compare themselves to this height in a number of different ways. Next, get them to work out how many of them it would take to be the same height as a giant moa. If you have time, repeat this exercise for the six metre wingspan of Argentavis magnificens, the extinct vulture with the largest wingspan ever recorded.
Birds have many different shapes of beaks and these are adapted to function in a number of different ways. Assemble a collection of beak-like tools, such as scissors, tweezers, pliers, nut-crackers mole-grips and so on, and get your students to try to undertake a series of different activities with them (e.g. neatly cutting paper, picking up a rubber band, picking up a pea, cracking a nut and so on) so they can work out which tool is best suited to which job. This can then be related to how different beak shapes are adapted to different ways of feeding.
The largest eggs ever laid by a bird were produced by the now-extinct elephant bird of Madagascar. Their eggs weighed up to ten kilograms. Get your students to weigh a hen’s egg, and then use this number to work out how many hen’s eggs would weigh the same as a single elephant bird’s egg. Once they have done this, get them to work out how many people an omelette made from an elephant bird’s egg would feed. For this calculation, assume that each person would normally require the equivalent of two hens eggs to make them an omelette. Finally, work out how big the pan would need to be to make an elephant bird’s egg omelette for that many people.
The fastest animal in the world is the peregrine falcon, and it can fly at up to 389 km/h (242 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. How does the speed of your fastest student compare to a peregrine falcon? Would they be able to beat one in a race? Challenge your students to find out the speeds that other birds can fly at, and see which one is closest to your fastest student.
Find a video of penguins swimming underwater, and watch how they move by flapping their wings. Then compare this to a video of how other birds fly through the air. Can your students see the similarities in the way penguins and other birds move? Do your students agree that the penguins are flying underwater?

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Reptiles by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-42-8)

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The biggest living reptile species is the saltwater crocodile. Mark out the maximum length of a saltwater crocodile (six metres) on your classroom floor, and then get each student to compare their height to its length. How do they compare? How many of them would need to lie head-to-toe to be the same length as a saltwater crocodile?
The smallest living reptile is the dwarf gecko. It is only 1.6 centimetres long. Get each student to draw a picture of a gecko to scale (that is, make sure it is only 1.6 centimetres long) and then cut it out. Using these cut-outs, get your students to work together to see how many dwarf geckos would need to be laid end to end to be the same length as a human arm. How many would be needed to be same length as your tallest student? What about the length of a saltwater crocodile (the largest living reptile species).
Some reptiles are able to maintain a warm body temperature simply because of their very large size. To demonstrate this, pour some hot water (but not dangerously hot!) into containers of different volumes (but, ideally, with similar shapes), and get your students to measure how their temperatures change over a period of ten minutes. Once they have done this, get them to create two graphs, one showing the water temperatures of all the containers at the start, and one showing the temperatures of the different-sized containers after ten minutes. Can they see the relationship between container size and how the water temperature changed over time? They should find that the water in larger containers cool more slowly, and this is the same principle behind gigantothermy in reptiles, and it is probably how the dinosaurs stayed warm.
The largest eggs ever laid by a reptile were produced by dinosaurs. They could be up to 60 centimetres long and 20 centimetres in diameter. Get your students to measure a hen’s egg, and then use the measurements to estimate out how many hen’s eggs would be able to fit into the largest dinosaur eggs ever fond. Once they have done this, get them to work out how many people an omelette made from such a dinosaur egg would feed. For this calculation, assume that each person would normally require the equivalent of two hens eggs to make them an omelette. What do they think a dinosaur egg omelette would taste like? Would it taste like one made from a hen’s egg? If not, why not?
The biggest reptile that that ever lived is the dinosaur Argentinosaurus. It was 39 metres long. If you have the space, mark out a line of this length and get your class to compare themselves to this length in as many different ways as possible. How many students holding hands can make a chain as long as an Argentinosaurus? How about if they are lying down head-to-toe? How many steps would it take to walk the length of an Argentinosaurus? How long would it take to run this distance?
Pterosaurs were large, flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs. The largest species had wingspans of up to eleven metres. Mark this distance out on your classroom floor and see how this compares to the outstretched arms of your student. How many students would need to join hands to form a chain as long as the wingspan of the largest pterosaurs that ever lived? Can they guess what the answer will be before they measure it? Can they work this out in advance by measuring the length of five students outstretched arms, calculating an average and then dividing the larges wingspan (11m) by this number. Depending on the age of your students, you may need to lead them through this process.
The fastest living reptile is the bearded dragon, and it can run at up to 40 km/h (25 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. How does the fastest student compare to a bearded dragon? Would they be able to beat one in a race? Challenge your students to find out the speeds that other reptiles can run at, and see which one is closest to your fastest student.
The fastest dinosaurs were the ornithominids and they could run at up to 60 km/h (40 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. Could your fastest student out-run one of these dinosaurs? See if your students can find out how fast other dinosaurs, such as velociraptors, T. Rex and Triceratops, could run. Which dinosaurs would they be able to beat in a race?
A giant tortoise which died in 2006 was 255 years old when it died. This is the oldest a reptile in known to have lived for. Draw a timeline starting in 2006 and going back two hundred an fifty five years. Have your students mark on it the dates of key points in human history that have occurred over this time (such as the end of the Second World War) and/or key human inventions/innovations (e.g the invention of the jet engine, the car, the first powered flight and so on) to help them understand just how long this is. Alternatively, you could get them to add on their dates of birth, and the dates of birth of their oldest living relative on this time line.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Amphibians by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-43-5)

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The biggest living amphibian is the Chinese salamander. Mark out the maximum length of a Chinese salamander (180 centimetres) on your classroom floor, and then get each student to compare their height to its length. How do they compare? Are any of them bigger than the largest living amphibian species?
The smallest living amphibian is a frog that is only 0.77 centimetres long. Give each student a few grains of long-grain rice (such as Basmati rice) to measure. How does the length of this mini-amphibian compare to the size of a grain of rice? Is it roughly the same? A bit longer? Or a bit shorter?
The biggest amphibian that that ever lived a crocodile-like amphibian called Prionosuchus, which was up to nine metres long. If you have the space, mark out a line of this length and get your class to compare themselves to this length in as many different ways as possible. How many students holding hands can make a chain as long as this ancient amphibian? How about if they are lying down head-to-toe? How many steps would it take to walk the length of Prionosuchus?
No amphibians can fly, but some can do the next best thing: glide. To do this, they have adaptations such as very large webbed feet that help slow their descent. This works by increasing their surface area. To demonstrate this, get your students to take two pieces of play-dough that are approximately the same size. Roll one into a ball, and then roll the other out into a large flat disc. If you have a sufficiently high window (this will need to be several storeys up), you can get your students to careful drop both of these out of the window at the same time and see which hits the ground first. The flattened disc should fall slightly more slowly because of the increased air resistance. This is the same principle that allows flying frogs to glide from tree to tree.
Olms are blind, cave-dwelling salamanders from Europe that live for over one hundred years. Draw a timeline starting today and going back one hundred years. Have your students mark on it the dates of key points in human history that have occurred over this time (such as the end of the Second World War) and/or key human inventions/innovations (e.g the invention of the jet engine, the car, the first powered flight and so on) to help them understand just how long this is. Alternatively, you could get them to add on their dates of birth, and the dates of birth of their oldest living relative on this time line.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Fish by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-44-2)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The biggest living fish species is the whale shark. Mark out the maximum length of a whale shark (twelve metres) on your classroom floor, and then get each student to compare their height to its length. How do they compare? How many of them would need to lie head-to-toe to be the same length as a whale shark?
The smallest living fish species range in size from 0.7 to 1 centimetre in length. Give each student a few grains of long-grain rice (such as Basmati rice) to measure. How does the length of this mini-fish compare to the size of a grain of rice? Is it roughly the same? A bit longer? Or a bit shorter? How many of these fish would you need to lay end-to-end to be the same length as a whale shark, the biggest living fish species?
The biggest shark species that that ever lived is called Megalodon, and it was up to eighteen metres long. If you have the space, mark out a line of this length and get your class to compare themselves to this length in as many different ways as possible. How many students holding hands can make a chain as long as a Megalodon? How about if they are lying down head-to-toe? How many steps would it take to walk the length of a Megalodon? How big do they think its mouth would have been? Could it have swallowed them whole?
Get your students to make a model of a flying fish from the inside tube from a roll of kitchen roll. Cut a slit in one side of the tube about one quarter of the length away from the head, and then make a second corresponding slit on the other side. Make ‘wings’ of a variety of different lengths from strips of cardboard. Take the shortest set of wings and slide the m through the slits in the tube, and then throw it to see how far it will fly. Just make sure that your students throw it gently or it won’t glide properly. Replace the wings with a slightly longer set and throw it again to It should go further this time. Keep repeating this process until you’ve reached the longest set of wings. This will help demonstrate the main adaption that flying fish have to help them fly (greatly enlarged pectoral fins). If you want, and your students are interested, you can create a graph of glide distance against wing length to show this in more detail.
Archerfish capture their prey by squirting water at them to knock them off over-hanging branches. Set up a small tank of water with some over-hanging branches over it will plastic insects on it. Get your students to use water pistols/squirt guns to see if they can knock the insects off. They should find it harder than it looks!
The fastest fish in the world is the black marlin and they can swim at up to 129 km/h (80 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. Can your fastest student run raster than a black marlin? What about a mako shark (the fastest shark species that can swim at 74 km/h (46 mph))? Challenge your students to find out the speeds that other fish can swim at, and see which one is closest to your fastest student.
The world’s slowest fish species is the sunfish. It would take them six minutes to cover thirty two metres. Measure out this distance, and have a slow race to see whether any of your students can move a slow as a sloth. The rules for a slow race are that each student must keep moving forward in a straight line at all times. They cannot stop, go backwards or go sideways. Last one across the line wins.
The longest lived fish species is the Greenland shark, and they are thought to be able to live to be more than five hundred years old. Draw a timeline starting today and going back five hundred years. Have your students mark on it the dates of key points in human history that have occurred over this time (such as the end of the Second World War) and/or key human inventions/innovations (e.g the invention of the jet engine, the car, the first powered flight and so on) to help them understand just how long this is. Alternatively, you could get them to add on their dates of birth, and the dates of birth of their oldest living relative on this time line.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Invertebrates by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-45-9)

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The biggest living invertebrate is the colossal squid. These can be up to 14 metres long and weigh as much as 750 kilograms. If you have access to suitable scales, work out the total weight of your class, and help your class calculate whether, together, they weigh more or less than a colossal squid. If it is less, have them work out how many of them would, together, weigh the same as a colossal squid. If it is more, have them work out how many more children they’d need to recruit to weigh the same as a colossal squid.
Invertebrates evolved in the sea, but around 530 million years ago, they started to colonise the land. The only evidence we have of this is the tracks and trails of footprints that they left behind as they walked across ancient sand dunes that later became fossilised. By examining these tracks, scientists can tell what types of animals made them. To demonstrate how they can do this, divide the students into pairs and give each student a tray filled with sand as well as a series of different objects. While one member of the pair looks away, the other selects an object and uses it to leave a trail across the sand. When they are finished, the student who was looking away has to try to guess which object was used to make the trail. Once done, the pair can swap roles and repeat the process.
The longest invertebrate species is the bootlace worm, and while it is only 1 centimetre wide, it can be up to 55 metres long. If you have the space, mark out a line of this length and get your class to compare themselves to this length in as many different ways as possible. How many students holding hands can make a chain as long as a bootlace worm? How about if they are lying down head-to-toe? How many steps would it take to walk the length of a bootlace worm?
Each autumn, Monarch butterflies migrate almost 7,800 kilometres (4,800 miles) from southern Canada to Mexico. Have your students walk for 100 metres and time how long it takes them to do this. Once they are finished, get them to work out how long it would take them to walk, non-stop, the same distance that monarch butterflies have to fly on this epic migration. This will bring home to them just how amazing this feat is for such a small and fragile insect.
The fastest flying insects are the dragon flies, and they can fly at up to 56 km/h (45 mph). Set up a running track and measure how fast each student in your class can run. Can your fastest student run raster than a dragon fly can fly? Challenge your students to find out the speeds that other insects can fly at, and see which one is closest to your fastest student.
If you are brave enough, and have access to a microscope, see if you can find an example of an eyebrow mite which you can show your students. This is a good example of invertebrates that live on humans, but is not necessarily for the feint-hearted!
Some invertebrates can live an incredibly long time. To demonstrate this, create a timeline starting today and going back 10,000 years. Mark on this when the oldest living examples of a range of invertebrates alive today would have been born (100 years ago for the lobster, 507 years ago for a bivalve mollusc, 1,550 for Antarctic sponges, 4,000 years for black coral and 10,000 years for glass sponges from the Southern Ocean). Once you have completed this, have your students also mark on it the dates of key points in human history that have occurred over this time (such as the end of the Second World War, the end of the last ice age) and/or key human inventions/innovations (e.g the invention of the jet engine, the car, the first powered flight, the first iron tool and so on) to help them understand just how long this is

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Aminals Box Set by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-51-0)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from all the books in this box set by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £20 (this compares to £30 if you were to purchase a separate individual licence for each book), and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the whole box set. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Scotland’s Dolphins by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-55-8)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Take your children into the playground and help them to draw out a life-sized outline of a killer whale (Scotland’s largest dolphin species) and a common dolphin (the smallest species). Ask them to guess how many of them it would take to be the same size as a common dolphin, and then as a killer whale. Once they have provided an answer, see who is closest to being right by getting the students to lie down head-to-toe in the outlines.
Download the catalogue of individual bottlenose dolphins from the Moray Firth from the link provided on page ten, and select ten to twenty individual dolphins. Print out two copies of the dorsal fin of each individual and use them to play a game based on matching the dolphin photos, such as snap or pairs.
Again, using the catalogue of dorsal fins from page ten, you can investigate how scientists work out how many dolphins are in a population. This is done using something called mark-and-recapture. To do this, print out the dorsal fins of thirty different individual dolphins (but don’t tell your students how many dolphins you have printed out) and write their names on the back. This gives you your starting population. Now shuffle theses dorsal fins and put them in a box. Get your students to put their hand into the box and take out ten dorsal fin photos, one at a time. Ask your students to write down the names of those ten dolphins, and then return them to the box. Mix up the photos, and the draw out ten photos again. Ask your students to write down the names of the second group of dolphins. Now, ask your students to count how many dolphins names appear on the list of each group. This should be between three and four. To estimate the total population size then takes a little bit of maths. Divide sample size (in this case, ten) by the number of individuals found in both samples. Now, multiple the sample size by this number, and you have your population size estimate. Your students can then count out the total population size (the total number of dolphin photos in the box) and see how good their estimate was. It may well not be that close, but if they repeat this exercises three times, and take an average value, you should find it is closer to the actual number. If you want to find out more about how this works, you can read this Wikipedia article.
One of the reasons why living in groups can help protect individuals from predators is because of something called group viligance. Group vigilance is an effect where being in a larger group increases the chance that an approaching predator will be spotted before it is too late. This can be explored by playing a game in a gym or a playground. In this game, assign one student the role of a shark. Their job is to try to sneak up on a dolphin without being seen. Mark out a line approximately five metres from a wall, and make the shark stand behind this line. Next, assign one individual to be a dolphin. They stand facing the wall and they are instructed to turn round and look for the approaching shark once every ten seconds. If they spot the shark approaching (i.e. standing between them and the line), the shark must return ti its starting point. If the shark reaches them before they turn round, they have been eaten. Once you have done this with one dolphin (where it should be very easy for the shark to sneak up on them unseen), repeat this exercise with two dolphin, wit both dolphins only turning round once every ten seconds. However, this time stagger the times a which the two dolphins first turn round so that they don’t both turn round at the same time. This makes it harder for the shark, but it should still be possible for the shark to win some times. Finally, do this with three dolphin, again staggering the times when they look round, and you should find it virtually impossible to the shark to approach unnoticed. Note: This is an activity best carried out with older children, and it may take several attempts for you to work out exactly how best to make it work for your class. In particular, you may find that you need to do the counting, and tap each dolphin on the shoulder when they are due to turn round, to ensure that turn round at the appropriate time.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Scotland’s Seabirds by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-59-6)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The largest Scottish seabird is the northern gannet, while the smallest is the European storm petrel. Divide your class into groups and give each group a life size cut-out of a northern gannet and a European storm petrel, both with their wings spread out. Ask your students to work out how many times bigger a northern gannet is than a storm petrel using the cut-outs. Once they have done this, ask them how they could have used maths to work this out instead.
Find pictures of as many different seabird species as you can (they don’t have to be Scottish ones – they can be from anywhere in the world). Ask your students to see if they can work out which ones fly long distances in search of food (they are species like gannets which have long narrow wings), which ones dive deep underwater for find food (they are species like puffins that have short, stubby wings), and which ones are generalist foragers (they species like gulls that have wings in between these two extremes).
Puffins can dive to depths of up to sixty metres while foraging for food. They do this on a single breath of air. Take your students into the gym or the playground and ask them to see how far they walk while holding their breath. To prevent cheating, give each student a plastic cup. Ask them to put it over their mouths and inhale before holding their breath, and then get them to let go of the cup and start walking. If they don’t hold their breath, the cup will fall off. Note: This activity may not be suitable for children with certain medical conditions, such as asthma.
Hang a large map of the world on the wall of the classroom, and then use pins and string to show where different seabird species that breed in Scotland go in winter months. This can lead on to discussions of what threats seabirds may face in different parts of the world, and where different people around the world may encounter them. Alternatively, divide your class into groups and give each group a blank map. Next, assign each group a different Scottish seabird species, and ask them to mark out on the map where their species goes in winter. Finally, ask them to work out the distance the species travels in a year, and what they might see as they travel to different parts of the world.
Ask your students to draw a picture of a great auk and a penguin, and them ask them to label up the similarities between these two unrelated types of bird. This can then be used as the basis for introducing the subject of convergent evolution, where two unrelated species evolve to look similar because they are adapted to the same lifestyle (in this case, swimming underwater to catch food).

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Scotland’s Native Wildlife by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-62-6)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Scotland’s largest native land animal is the red deer. Each year, male red deer, known as stags, grow antlers which they use to fight with each other during the autumn rut. These antlers are then shed the in winter before new ones are grown the following year. With each passing year, males grow more points, or tines, on their antlers, so you can get an idea of how old a male is by looking at the number of points on his antlers. This means that males can use the size and number of points on the antlers to judge how old another male is, and so whether they are likely to beat them in a fight. Get each child within the class to make their own antlers out of card, and then hold an antler parade to see whose antlers are best. Judge them based on size and the number of points on them.
Atlantic salmon hatch from eggs laid in Scottish rivers, but once they are large enough they head downstream and out to sea, where they feed for several years before returning home to breed. As a class, make a wall poster showing the different parts of the life cycle of an Atlantic salmon, including a map to show how far Atlantic salmon will travel in their lifetimes, and the different habitats they will use. Once the life cycle is complete, you can add the trials that Atlantic salmon face at different points of their life cycle, ranging from dealing with pollution of Scottish rivers, to avoiding the nets of fishermen while at sea, avoiding being caught by seals and bottlenose dolphin as in river estuaries as they return from the sea, having to leap up dams and waterfalls, and being eaten by ospreys.
Since their return to Scotland in the 1950s, the osprey has been an iconic Scottish bird. Their nests are used year after year, with the same pair returning to it each summer, and they can be up to two metres across. Using sticks, have your class create their very own, life-sized osprey nest to demonstrate just how big these nests are. Once it has been completed, explore the journey that ospreys take as they migrate to west Africa each winter before returning to Scotland the following Spring. Plot this journey on a map and discussions of what threats ospreys may face in different parts of the world. Finally, ask your class to work out the distance that ospreys travel each year, and what they might see as they travel to different parts of the world.
Divide you class into groups and ask each group to pick a species of animal that used to live in Scotland, but that is no longer found here. Ask them to create a fact sheet about their chosen animal, including pictures, information about the habitats they live in, why they became extinct in Scotland, when this happened, and what could be done to bring them back (if this is possible).
Ask your children to draw a picture of a section of a Scottish river before and after beavers have built a dam on it. Next, get them to search for information on it the different habitats which are created as a result of beavers making dams on rivers, and what other native species this can benefit. Once they have found this information, they can add this to their drawings.
Divide your class into groups and assign a particular native Scottish animal to each group (or you can let them pick them own native species as long as each group picks a different species). They should then create their own ‘Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia’ style double-page spread about their assigned animal. Each of these should have a short paragraph about the animal, some quick facts, and a prompt to draw an interesting feature related to this animal. Once the individual pages have been completed, you can bring them together to create your classes very own encyclopaedia chapter about Scottish native wildlife.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Scotland’s Castles by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-61-9)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Scottish castles had many different types of defences. Ask the students in your class to read up about these defences, and then draw a castle of their own design which incorporates as many of these defences as they’d like. Make sure that the students label each of them with their name, and how it functions (e.g. Murder Hole – Used for dropping rocks and hot oil on people who got into the castle).
Divide your class into groups and either ask them to pick their favourite Scottish castle, or assign them a particular one. They then need to work together to create a poster about this castle. It should cover when it was built, who built it, why it was built at it’s specific location, when it was last used, what defences it had and information about any times it was attacked or wars it played a crucial role in.
Divide your class into groups and assign a particular Scottish castle to each group. They should then create their own ‘Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia’ style double-page spread about their assigned castle. Each of these should have a short paragraph about the castle, some quick facts, and a prompt to draw an interesting feature of the castle. Once the individual pages have been completed, you can bring them together to create your classes very own encyclopaedia chapter about Scottish castles.
Three different types of castles were built in Scotland. These were motte-and-bailey castles, curtain wall castles and tower houses. Divide your students into groups and assign each group a type of castle. They should then create a model of this castle type which shows how it was made, and what its defensive abilities were.
Many different types of siege engines were used when armies attacked Scottish castles. Of these, the most powerful were the giant catapults called trebuchet. Working in pairs, get your students to build a working model of a trebuchet. You can find instructions for making model trebuchet by using your favourite internet search engine, and you can pick the one you think will be easiest for your students to construct and provide them with a copies of these instructions. Note: Large trebuchet are incredibly powerful and can be dangerous, so make sure you set a limit to the size of the trebuchet they are allowed to make of about fifty centimetres tall.
ind out which is your nearest castle (or a nearby one which there is plenty of information about). Arrange a visit to it, and then and as a class project create a presentation that tells its history from the time it was built until the present day. You can divide its history into different time periods or different events and assign each one to a different group.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Scotland’s Folklore by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-63-3)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Scottish folklore has proved to be an inspiration to many authors and writers over the years, including the likes of J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien. r example, the house elves in the Harry Potter books were almost certainly inspired by the brownies of Scottish folklore. Ask your students to pick their favourite element of Scottish folklore and the write a short story inspired by it.
This Draw your Own Encyclopaedia book only covers a small part of Scottish folklore, and none of the folklore from other places around the world. Set each child in your class to pick aspect of folklore from Scotland or another part of he world, and ask them to create their own double-page spread about it (complete with a title, a topic paragraph, some quick facts and a drawing prompt). Once these have been completed, bring them all together to create your classes very own encyclopaedia of their favourite folklore.
Have your students make models of what they think the Loch Ness Monster looks like, and then discuss whether it could really be a relic from the age of the dinosaurs. If not, discuss what other type of animal they think it could it be.
Get your class to help create a wall map showing the locations of all the places in Scotland where kelpies are supposed to live, and any stories associated with them. This can then be used to explore how the kelpie myth varies from place to place. In addition, you can ask your students whether they can see any patterns in where kelpies are said to live and whether these places have anything in common with each other. A great resource for this activity is an interactive map created by Lari Don to accompany her Secret of the Kelpie picture book. You can find this map by clicking here.
The legend of the big grey man of Ben MacDhui was probably inspired by an unusual weather phenomenon called ‘Brocken Spectre’. With your class explore this phenomenon, and also other unusual weather phenomenon which have inspired folk tales, including rainbows (and the pots of gold said to lie a the ends), ball lightening and St Elmo’s fire.
It might seem like Scottish folklore is just something from the past, but this isn’t true, and still plays an important role in Scotland’s present. To demonstrate this, ask your class to find examples of elements of Scottish folklore which they can find in their everyday lives. This might be in storybooks, in advertising, in artwork, in music, in the names of businesses or products. Examples include the Kelpies sculptures near the Falkirk wheel, the Kelpies children’s book collection from Floris Books, the Gillie Dhu restaurant in Edinburgh, and even the Brownies section of the Girl Guides organisation.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Our Solar System by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-46-6)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

To help your class understand the size of the solar system, take them outside into your school’s playground or another open area. Using chalk or any suitable object, mark out the location of the Sun at the centre of the solar system. Next, using 1 centimetre to represent 1 million kilometres. On this scale, Mercury will be 58 centimetres away from the Sun, Venus will be 108 centimetres away, Earth 150 cm away, Mars will be 228 cm away, Jupiter will be 778 cm away, Saturn will be 1427 cm away, Uranus will be 2871 cm away, Neptune will be 4497 cm away and Pluto will be 5913 cm away. By contrast, the inner edge of the Oort cloud would be 7.5 kilometres away, and the outer edge would be 150 km away! If the open space you have available is not big enough to do this, try using a scale of 1 cm to 2 million km. Alternatively, you can create a similar outline of our solar system using a scale of 1 mm to 1 million kilometres.
Divide your class into groups and get each group to make a model of an individual planet. Make sure that each group uses the same scale. These can then be used to create a model solar system to show how different in size the individual planets are. This activity can be combined with the one above which looks at the distances between all the planets in the solar system.
Explore how different life would be on different planets in the solar system. Look at how things like day length, year length, temperature, and body weight would vary between them, and ask your class to imagine what it would be like living under these different conditions. You can find lots of useful information for this activity here.
A typical trip to Mars would take between 150 and 250 days. Ask your students to plan a trip there. Get them to decide on what they’d need to take with them, what size of spacecraft they’d need, where they’d get electricity from, how much oxygen they’d need to take to breathe for over 150 days, what medicines they would need to take, how they would exercise during the journey (to stop their muscles atrophying during the trip), how they would keep themselves occupied, where they’d get food from, where they’d get water from, how they’d communicate with people back on Earth, how many people they’d want to take, whether they would want to take any pets, how much rocket fuel they’d need, how much toilet paper they’d need, and so on. Remember that if they wish to come back again, they would need to take enough supplies to do that too! You can also use this planning to think about how they could reduce the amount of stuff they’d need to take (such as using solar panels to generate electricity, recycling urine into drinking water, and growing plants using human waste as manure).

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Space Exploration by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-49-7)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Study The History Of Space Exploration: The first human object was sent into space in 1957, and since then we have been exploring it using many different spacecraft. For this activity, start by creating a timeline that covers the period from 1957 until the present day. Add on to it significant technological and social moments for context (like the invention of the first personal computer, the invention of the internet, the launch of the world wide web, Google, Facebook, and the first cell phone). Now, divide your class into pairs and assign each pair a specific spacecraft. They then have to write a short fact file about that spacecraft outlining when it was launched, what it was designed to do, where it went and how long its mission lasted. Next, they can draw a picture of their spacecraft, and add both it and their fact file to the space exploration timeline. This will give them a greater understanding of how space exploration has changed over time.
Design A Martian Space Colony: Set your students the task of designing a colony where people could live on Mars. Divide them into groups, and ask each group to design a specific element of it. These can include where the people would live, where they would work, where and how they would get their power, where they would get water from, how they would grow their food, how they would communicate with people back on Earth. Once each group has settle on their design, ask each group to create a drawing or a model of their particular element, and explain to the rest of the class how it would work and why they decided on their specific design. Finally, then bring them all together to create your very own Martian space colony.
Create Your Own Voyager-style Discs: Each of the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 carries a golden record disc containing information that will tell any aliens who find it where Earth is and what life here is like. You can find out what was on this disc at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contents_of_the_Voyager_Golden_Record. Discuss this list of items with your class and then ask them to come up with a list of items that they would put on such a disc to tell aliens all about their lives on 21st Century Earth.
Take Part In A Citizen Science Space Project: Why just teach your class about space exploration when you can help them become real-life space explorers? To do this, all you need to do is find a suitable citizen science space project and then help them take part. You can find a list of current projects that you can potentially help your class take part in at www.zooniverse.org/projects?discipline=astronomy&page=1&status=live.
Build An Air-powered Bottle Rocket: This is a great experiment to help you students understand how a rocket engine can work without any moving parts. It requires that you purchase a bottle-rocket kit, such as the Rokit Bottle Rocket Kit (available from www.amazon.co.uk/ROKIT-Bottle-Rocket-Pressure-Action/dp/B001MW7S1E/). This kit contains a rocket engine that you can attach to a plastic water bottle, and with the aid of a foot pump, you can use it to demonstrate how a rocket engine works. In addition, you can explore how to design a rocket by using different shapes and sizes of bottles to see what effect this has on the distance that they travel. Similarly, you can vary the amount of water that you add to them to see what impact this has on the rocket’s performance.

Draw Your Own Encyclopaedia Hebridean Marine Life by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-54-1)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

Draw Your Own Life-sized Hebridean Food Web: To help your class understand how marine food webs work, find an open space, preferably outside in a playground, and using chalk, either you or your students can draw out life-size representation of a food web based around sandeels (a key prey species for many marine predators in western Scotland). To do this, start by drawing a cloud of green dots to represent phytoplankton. Next, draw a group of sausage-shapes, each about half a centimetre long to represent zooplankton, and connect this group with an arrow to the phytoplankton to show that they eat them. Now draw a shoal of narrow, eel-like fish, each about five centimetres long to represent sandeels, and connect them with an arrow to the zooplankton. The next step up the food web are the predators. These include mackerel (25 cm long), puffins (30 cm tall), porpoises (150 cm long), and minke whales (10,000 cm long). Draw a life-size representation of each of these animals, and join them to the sandeels by arrows. Finally, end your food web by drawing a life-sized killer whale (10,000 cm long) and link it to the mackerel, porpoise and minke whale. You can now label each drawing with the animal’s name, and then ask your students to create their own copy of this food web. As a final question, ask your students to think about what would happen this food web if there were no more sandeels (which is a likely impact of climate change on Hebridean marine life).
Explore How Long Marine Animals Live: Marine animals are often much longer-lived than terrestrial animals of a similar size, and this makes them more vulnerable to the impacts of human activities. To explore this, mark out at timeline that is 500 centimetres (5 metres long). Next, inform your students that the right hand end marks the present, and that one centimetre represents a single year going back into the past. You can now mark on this the point where your students were born, when their parents were born and when their grandparents were born. You can also mark on it events from history and society, such as when mobile phones were invented, when the world wide web was created, when humans first landed on the moon, the second and first world wars, the first aeroplanes and so on. Once you have this timeline created, you can add on when animals of different species which are alive to day were born. For a puffin, this would be 25 years ago (or 25 centimetres from the right hand end of your timeline); for a porpoise, 35 years (or 35 cm); for bottlenose dolphin 50 years (50cm); for a fulmar (a type of seabird) 68 years (68mm); and for a killer whale 80 years (80cm). You can also add examples of other groups of marine animals, such as the bowhead whale (200 years or 200cm), and the Greenland shark (500 years or 500cm). Finally, you can add on when the deepwater coral reefs near Barra and Mingulay were first established about 4,000 years ago (or 4000cm on your timeline – way beyond its original 500 cm length).
Explore Life In A Hebridean Rock Pool: Start by making a model of a rock pool either on a table or on a wall. Next, divide your students into pairs and assign each pair an animal species you might find in a typical Hebridean rock pool. These can include sea anemones, shrimp, limpets, barnacles, mussels, periwinkles, whelks, hermit crabs, crabs, gobies, lumpsuckers and octopus. Each pair then needs to make a model or draw a picture of their assigned animal and then create a fact card with information about the size of their animal, how long it lives, what they eat and any other interesting facts they can find out about it. Both the model/picture and the accompanying fact card can then be added to the model of the rock pool.

Draw Your Own … Series

Draw Your Own Monsters In My House by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-29-9)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

For this book, the reader is asked to draw the various monsters described in it. However, as an additional classroom activity, you could get your students to visualise the monsters described in the book in different ways. For example, they could make models of the monsters using modelling clay, papier-mâché, collages, or from any other suitable materials. Similarly, if you have the space, you can use chalk and get your students to work in groups to draw the monster of their choice at as large a scale as possible.
In the book, descriptions are provided for each monster. However, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about each one. Where did it come from? How did it end up hiding in Dr Colin’s house? Are any of the monsters in the house friends with each other? Are any of them enemies? Are they scared of each other? What do the monsters get up to when Dr Colin isn’t there? Challenge your students to pick their favourite monster and ask them to write a short story about it, making sure to use as many evocative ‘wow’ words as possible.

Draw Your Own Imaginary Menagerie by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-33-6)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

For this book, the reader is asked to draw the various imaginary animals described in it. However, as an additional classroom activity, you could get your students to visualise these animals in different ways. For example, they could make models of the animals using modelling clay, papier-mâché, collages, or from any other suitable materials. Similarly, if you have the space, you can use chalk and get your students to work in groups to draw the animal of their choice at as large a scale as possible.
In the book, descriptions are provided for each animal. However, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about each one. Where did it come from? How did Dr Colin first meet it? Are any of the animals in the book friends with each other? Are any of them enemies? What challenges do these animals face in their everyday lives? Challenge your students to pick their favourite animal and ask them to write a short story about it, making sure to use as many evocative ‘wow’ words as possible.

Learning By Drawing Series

Learning By Drawing Amazing Animals – Basic Word Types by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-36-7)

To purchase an educational licence which will allow you to legally create hand-outs for use in your classroom from this book by photocopying sections from it, please click on the button below. This will take you to PayPal, where you can purchase this licence with a credit or debit card. This licence will cost you a one-off fee of £5, and the licence will last for as long as you own a hard copy of the book. Once we have received your payment, we will send your licence out to you by email, so please make sure you supply an appropriate email address. This is done manually, so please be aware that it may take a few days for you to receive it, but you have permission to start using this licence from the moment you purchase it.

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

For this book, the reader is asked to draw the various amazing animals described in it. However, as an additional classroom activity, you could get your students to visualise these animals in different ways. For example, they could make models of the animals using modelling clay, papier-mâché, collages, or from any other suitable materials. Similarly, if you have the space, you can use chalk and get your students to work in groups to draw the animal of their choice at as large a scale as possible.
In the book, descriptions are provided for each animal. However, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about each one. Where did it come from? How did it end up becoming Dr Colin’s pets? What else does it get up to? What else does it like to wear? Challenge your students to pick their favourite animal and write a few additional sentences about it, making sure they use the different word types in the appropriate way.

Other Educational Books

The Little Book Of Zombie Mathematics: 25 Zombie-based Maths Problems by Colin M. Drysdale (ISBN: 978-1-909832-21-3)

Unlike the other books on this page, you do not need to purchase a licence to use the contents of this book in your classroom. Instead, you can visit the Maths With Zombies blog where these problems were originally published. There, you can download individual PDF hand-outs for each of the problems featured in this book. Alternatively, you can provide your students with the link to this blog to allow them to work through the problems in their own time (note: Due to the editing process involved in putting the book version together, there may be a few slight differences between the problems featured on the Maths With Zombies blog and those in the book, but in general they are very similar).

Ideas For Classroom Activities To Accompany This Book:

The moment you introduce your students to the world of Maths With Zombies, you’ll find that they’ll start asking questions about how the answers would change under different versions of the scenarios. This should be encouraged as it’s a great way to get them really thinking about the maths involved in solving the various scenarios. As a result, one of the best classroom activities to accompany any Maths With Zombies-based lesson is to give them free reign to change any of the variables in the basic problem, and then work out what impact that would have on the outcome. For example, they can vary the speed that the zombies move at, or that they can run away at. They can add in extra variables, such as the time it takes to open a car door, or whack a zombie on the head with a baseball bat. They can add in extra hurdles, or more zombies, or faster cars, or different modes of transport. Really, the only limit here is their imaginations, as long as they can transform it into mathematical variables that they can add in to the maths to help them work out what will happen, and whether it will improve their chances of survival, or not.

If you find yourself really drawn into the world of Maths With Zombies, you can even use these maths problems to create a Maths With Zombies assault course, where your students move around a room, solving different problems at different stations, either in groups, pairs or individually. Award them points for getting the right answer, and for ingenuity, and see who has the highest Maths With Zombies survival score at the end of the session.