When I was asked to make a series of lessons about mythical creatures, I wondered if I could work other skills, like math, geography, science, and critical thinking, into the lessons. I think I managed it! So here’s “Mythical Creature School.”
What Kids Will Do
In these explorations, kids might…
- solve mythical creature mysteries
- practice mapping skills
- create a bestiary
- collect and catalogue fairies
- do science experiments with fire
- do coin math with dragon treasure
- make a mermaid mirror
- grow salt crystals
- do self-portraits as chimeras
- make unicorn puppets
- and more
(Designed for kids preschool-1st/2nd grade, though many materials and activities might be of interest to older children and adults, too.)
Read On
Map-making books
- Me on the Map, Joan Sweeney and Qin Leng [Amazon | Bookshop] — A useful book for learning about maps and all the ways in which children can describe where they live.
Critical thinking books
- Monster Hunt: Exploring Mysterious Creatures, Jim Arnosky [Amazon] — Kind of a peculiar book, but it was actually quite useful in thinking about how mythical creatures might have been invented (and why), and also how some creatures that once seemed like they must have been mythical actually turned out to be real.
- Baby Monkey, Private Eye, Brian Selznick and David Serlin [Amazon | Bookshop] — As over-the-top silly as this book is, it did have some useful messaging about looking for clues and taking notes when you’re trying to solve a problem. And children think it’s hysterical.
- Mooncake, Frank Asch [Amazon | Bookshop] — A cute story, but it’s particularly useful here for talking about how well-intentioned eyewitnesses can often be mistaken, even when they earnestly believe they’re telling the truth.
Books About Mythical Creatures
- A Natural History of Fairies, Emily Hawkins and Jessica Roux [Amazon | Bookshop] — This is my favorite of the books that make up lots of things about mythical creatures but do so in a scientific way. This book is extremely beautiful and very impressive. Although it’s about fairies, you can learn a lot about Linnaean Classification, habitats, nature observation — all sorts of things.
- The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures, Stephen Krensky and Pham Quang Phuc [Amazon | Bookshop] — An absolutely beautiful encyclopedia-style reference book of mythical creatures. Each creature has about one page of text and another full page of illustration, and the book covers a wide range of creatures from all over the world.
- The Magical Unicorn Society Official Handbook (and its sequel) [Amazon | Bookshop] — These books aren’t historical, like The Very Short, Entirely True History of Unicorns, but they are great if you have a child who loves classification and animal descriptions. It makes all of these unicorn facts up, but they’re treated scientifically, with information about habitats and diets, maps, and so on.
- The Very Short, Entirely True History of Unicorns, Sarah Laskow and Sam Beck [Amazon] — An easy-to-read book that looks at unicorns historically.
- The Very Short, Entirely True History of Mermaids, Sarah Laskow and Reimena Yee [Amazon | Bookshop] — As with the unicorn version, a nice historical treatment of a mythical creature.
- Gondra’s Treasure, Linda Sue Park [Amazon | Bookshop] — A sweet fictional story that also explains many of the major differences between draons in Eastern and Western mythologies.
- The Fox Wish, Kimiko Aman and Komako Sakai [Amazon | Bookshop] — A lovely story, and one of the only stories related to kitsune that I could find for kids.
- The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Dragons and Mythical Creatures [Amazon] — We got this for free at the library for completing a summer reading challenge, and while I don’t like everything about it, it was surprisingly useful for these weeks and had sections on many of the mythical creatures below.
- Flip-o-storic, Britta Drehsen and Sarah Ball [Amazon] — The same concept as Myth Match, but with extinct creatures. Useful for talking about adaptations and habitat.
- Cock-A-Doodle Moooo!: A Mixed-Up Menagerie, Keith DuQuette [Amazon] — A fun book about chimeras for even very young readers. It has loads of made-up animals and then some details about mythological chimeras at the back.
Explorations
Mythical Creature Detection Skills
Read: Bo the Brave, Bethan Woollven [Amazon | Bookshop]
Mapping
Read: The Atlas of Monsters: Mythical Creatures from Around the World, Sandra Lawrence and Stuart Hill [Amazon | Bookshop]
Me on the Map, Joan Sweeney and Qin Leng [Amazon | Bookshop]
Activity: Mapping our house
Make a flip book in the style of Me on the Map to show where you live (street, neighborhood, state, country, continent, planet). You can use a Teachers Pay Teachers flip book file like this one, but it can also easily be done yourself.
Problem Solving and Critical Thinking
Read: Monster Hunt: Exploring Mysterious Creatures, Jim Arnosky [Amazon] (For talking about how some creatures that were long believed to be mythical turned out to be real, cryptozoology, and thinking scientifically about how mythical creatures — if they were real — might live and survive)
Baby Monkey, Private Eye, Brian Selznick and David Serlin [Amazon | Bookshop] (With special attention to basic procedures used in solving mysteries)
Activity: Who stole…?
This is a game I invented that became wildly popular at our house. For this game, you arrange a “crime” and clues, all intended to mislead the children into thinking that a mythical creature is on the loose. Craft the crime and clues so that there’s an alternate explanation (however silly), and let the children use their detection skills to solve the crime.
- This works best if the witnesses and culprit all are stuffed animals or figurines. Hide the culprit with the stolen item somewhere in the house (along with an index card with its confession).
- Put clues on index cards with the “witnesses” (stuffed animals). The clues give the witnesses’ statements and also directions to find the next clue (“it went north” or “I saw it turn the corner and go east”). You can set out “compasses” with the cardinal directions on them next to each witness if you like. We always used three witnesses.
- Witness statements might involve confused declarations: “It was giant and had a sparkling horn!” or “It had huge claws and wings!” or “It had a beautiful tail and a woman’s head!”
- You might also set out “footprints” (traced on paper) for the kids to follow and collect as evidence.
- You might set out a “Mythical Creatures Detection Squad” notebook with sections for the kids to identify a) the problem that needs to be solved, b) the evidence they’ve collected, c) their suspects, and d) the final solution to the mystery. Add spots for “agent names,” label it “top secret,” and make a space for them to draw a picture of the case at the back.
For reference, our mysteries were: someone stole the candy (a llama wearing a unicorn horn headband, who was confused about when Halloween was [meant to seem like a unicorn committed the crime]); someone stole an iPad (a frog wearing “dragon” costume shoes and carrying a flashlight or battery-powered candle, who mistook the iPad for a lily pad [meant to seem like a fire-breathing dragon committed the crime]); someone stole the seaweed snacks (a whale was taking a doll for a ride, and they wanted to bring along a snack [meant to seem like a mermaid committed the crime]).
It’s a complicated activity, but a thrilling one, and it’s intended to be a fun way to get children to assess evidence and work on critical thinking.
Have a look: Medieval bestiaries
Activity: Make a bestiary
In a folder with brads, make a bestiary to record details of each mythical creature you learn about. Consider a blank page with just a fancy frame in one corner and fields for name, habitat, and diet. Or add some facts about the creatures.
Dragons
Read: The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Dragons and Mythical Creatures 27-41 [Amazon]
The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures, Stephen Krensky and Pham Quang Phuc [Amazon | Bookshop] 32
Dragons Love Tacos, Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri [Amazon | Bookshop]
Gondra’s Treasure, Linda Sue Park [Amazon | Bookshop]
Watch: London’s Chinese New Year Grand Parade
2016 CSCCA CNY Dragon Dance
Fire
As always with science experiments, ask kids to make a hypothesis about what will happen in the experiment, have them describe what actually happens, and then discuss the results.
Activity: Candle and water experiment
Place a tea light in a saucer of water (with a bit of food coloring in it), then cover it with a jar. If you have various sizes of jars, you can have a lot of fun guessing what will happen with bigger or smaller jars, then experimenting to find out if you were right. Video here and a good explanation of how this works here.
Activity: Extinguish candle flames with jars
In a variation on the above, this time simply cover a lit candle with jars of various sizes. Which ones do you think will extinguish the candle flame fastest, and why? Consider timing how long it takes the flame to go out with each jar.
Treasure
Activity: Dragon treasure coin counting and sorting
For preschool kids, have children match index cards with different numbers of colored dots to (real or play) coins: 3 dots, 3 coins; 6 dots, 6 coins. Instead of cards, you could also use a 6-sided die. For kindergarten and early elementary, have index cards with prompts like, “Find 3 ways to make $.25” or “Find 4 ways to make $1.” Have them work through the challenges. This activity is perhaps most exciting if the coins are in a locking box.
Activity: Ice castle with dragons and treasure
A classic activity that can be used over and over: freeze something in ice and then have kids melt it with salt or spray bottles filled with warm water. I got castle inspiration from here and purchased this excellent silicone castle mold. (If you don’t have “treasure” to freeze, simply use ice to melt it, add food coloring to highlight the caverns made by the salt, and call them dragon caves.)
Kitsune
Read: The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Dragons and Mythical Creatures 88-89
Mythical Beasts, Krensky 74
The Fox Wish, Kimiko Aman and Komako Sakai [Amazon | Bookshop]
Watch: Fox Village in Zao Japan
And/or: Fox Village in Japan: The Fluffiest Place on Earth!
Activity: Make a fox mask with online template
Realistic fox mask here and Japanese kitsune mask here.
Unicorns
Read: The Very Short, Entirely True History of Unicorns, Sarah Laskow and Sam Beck [Amazon]:
“Real Life Unicorns” 20, “Narwhals, the Unicorns of the Sea” 24, “The Secret Power of the Unicorn Horn,” “How to Test a Unicorn Horn,” “The Unicorn Cure,” and “The Real Price of a Horn” 44-51
Snack: Make unicorn popcorn (popcorn with white chocolate and sprinkles)
Activity: Make a unicorn puppet
Printable template from the wonderful Little Angel Theatre.
Mermaids
Read: The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Dragons and Mythical Creatures 67-73
Mythical Beasts, Krensky 91-93
Julián Is a Mermaid, Jessica Love [Amazon | Bookshop]
Watch: The Singing Mermaid
Activity: Shell Venn diagrams
If you have a shell collection, you can draw Venn diagrams on a sheet of paper and have children sort the shells in various ways.
Activity: Make a magic mirror
Making a mermaid mirror, in the tradition of Mami Wata and La Sirène. Template here from the wonderful Little Angel Theatre.
Activity: Grow salt crystals inside egg “shells”
Full instructions here. I found that epsom salts without food coloring worked a lot better than those with coloring. (You can also do this with borax, but if, like me, you’d rather not work with borax, epsom salts work well enough.)
Fairies
Read: A Natural History of Fairies, Emily Hawkins and Jessica Roux [Amazon | Bookshop] (whatever is of interest, as it’s a long and wonderful book)
Celtic Tales, Kate Forrester [Amazon | Bookshop], “The Brownie of Fern Glen”
Activity: Fairy treasure hunt and measuring
If you have halfpenny dolls (or any small dollhouse-style doll would work), hide them in various habitats around the house (I hid one in our strawberry dish in the fridge, one on some bananas, one in a plant, and so on). Kids can take a collection basket, flashlights, and tweezers/tongs and go on a hunt for them. Children kindergarten+ can also fill out identification sheets for each one, naming them, measuring them with a ruler, recording their habitats and diets, and illustrating them. Add them to the bestiary if you like.
Activity: Make pipe cleaner fairies
One set of instructions here and another here.
Chimeras
Read: The Atlas of Monsters: Mythical Creatures from Around the World, Sandra Lawrence and Stuart Hill [Amazon | Bookshop] 23
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, Ingri d’Aulaire and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire [Amazon | Bookshop] 129
Cock-A-Doodle Moooo!: A Mixed-Up Menagerie, Keith DuQuette [Amazon]
Watch: How Chimaera Mythology Became Reality
Alebrijes
Read: Miguel and the Amazing Alebrijes [Amazon | Bookshop], and of course you could always watch Disney’s Coco
Watch: Building Beautiful Monsters in Mexico
Read: Flip-o-storic, Britta Drehsen and Sarah Ball [Amazon]
Myth Match: A Fantastical Flipbook of Extraordinary Beasts, Good Wives and Warriors [Amazon | Bookshop]
Look: “Vintage-Style Illustrations Merge Animals, Insects, and Botanics to Form Bizarre Hybrid Creatures“
Art by Mark Brooks and Joanmiquel Bennasar
Activity: Make yourself into a chimera
For this activity, take full-body photographs of the kids against a blank wall. Print them out, one per sheet of paper, and then have them use colored pencils or markers to add fantastical details to their bodies. Wings? Horns? A mermaid tail? Fire breath? Scales? All of the above? (You might consider taking some photos with their arms hidden behind their backs, in case they want to add different arms to their bodies.)
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