Designing a paleontology-themed activity book

Dava

I've been working at the Waco Mammoth Site for a year and a half, and a few months ago, I was promoted to Education Coordinator. I get to handle fossils and teach people about megafauna, and people pay me to do it. It is AWESOME.

I'm also the main artist on staff, and I've made a few activity sheets. The director and I think I should put together a whole book. I like the idea, but I also remember having a love/hate relationship with activity books as a kid. I'd find 5 or 6 activities I wanted to do, and then I'd throw it in a drawer. If I make a book, I don't want it to have any filler.

So what I need is pretty simple--when you were a kid, which things in activity books did you like best? If you have kids, which ones do they prefer?

Intet

Actually I think I liked coloring books more than activity books (and probably still like coloring books). Could you do something like that? Maybe put some cool facts on the same page (you'd better put a giant sloth in this, because no giant mammal is cooler than that).

Here's pretty much exactly what I thought of. Check out the preview.

MetroidZoid

Off the top of my head:

A 'hidden pictures' coloring page(s) that shows a paleontologist in a rocky environment, but hidden within the lines are various megafauna.
Easy word search (don't skimp out on some latin names, either. How many of us knew dinosaur species by heart?)
A "put-them-in-order" puzzle that shows <x> globes over a geologic scale, and the kid has to put them in order (something along the lines of the continents moving, maybe, or are you wanting to restrict this to the Pleistocene?). Short explanation paragraph before, that describes what the kid needs to put in order.
Fill-in-the-layers: Full page puzzle with wide spaces representing rock strata, maybe with clues (fern leaf, dinosaur footprint, uh ice cube) and the kid can draw fossilized remains they would find in those areas.

Honestly, you'd probably be surprised how many common puzzles you could re-incorporate to your needs after spending a few dollars on some activity books at the Dollar Store or Wal-Mart too. And to repeat what @Intet said, make sure there's just some decent coloring pages too. And repeating activities seem to, I dunno, lessen the book's potential. Also also if you're going to put in coloring pages, might I recommend that they be similar eg. same thickness of lines and detail? I remember a big disconnect when one page was very intricate, and the other seemed made for a pre-schooler. Young kids don't care about lines, older ones do.

Dava

Awesome ideas! I'll definitely use some of these. Things I'd already planned on doing:

Lots of mazes (get the mammoth calf to its herd, etc.)
Word searches
Word scrambles
Crosswords
Coloring pages, including some where a kid is encouraged to draw something to complete the picture
Gridded image you're supposed to copy (this one is cool, because the image will be a dig site grid, and the kid will draw a map in the empty grid)

Picture searches could have real-world applicability, too. Say there's a picture of a scientist looking over bunch of bones. There can be a text box showing what the atlas bone looks like, explaining that each mammoth has only one. Count the atlas bones in the image, and you know how many mammoths you have.

Intet wrote: »

(you'd better put a giant sloth in this, because no giant mammal is cooler than that)

Absolutely! I could do a page that has several species of ground sloths on it. I would argue that glyptodons are cooler; they're my favorite. Xenarthrans just rock in general.