Richard grew up in Kenya as a Maasai boy, herding his family’s cattle, which represented their wealth and livelihood. Richard’s challenge was to protect their cattle from the lions who prowled the night just outside the barrier of acacia branches that surrounded the farm’s boma, or stockade. Though not well-educated, 12-year-old Richard loved tinkering with electronics. Using salvaged components, spending $10, he surrounded the boma with blinking lights, and the system works; it keeps lions away. His invention, Lion Lights, is now used in Africa, Asia, and South America to protect farm animals from predators. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Your challenge is to use broken or old technology and other available resources to create a prototype that can be used to protect your home. This could involve tinkering, hacking, or redesigning the components of the technology to meet your needs.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

The true story of how Momofuko Ando was inspired to create one of the world’s most popular foods after seeing long lines of hungry people waiting for a simple bowl of ramen following World War II. He dreamed about making a new kind of ramen noodle soup that was quick, convenient, and tasty for the hungry people because he believed that peace follows from a hungry stomach. With persistence, creativity, and a little inspiration, Ando succeeded. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a food product (a new food, tool, or invention, et al) to help increase access to food in your community.

ABCYA Animate is a free, interactive website that assists students in creating a stop-motion video. Students use a variety of backgrounds, characters, and other images that are combined to create an animated stop-motion video that can be exported as a .gif file for students to showcase their work. The website is intuitive for students and also for teachers. This activity will take 55 minutes and the activity must be completed in one sitting.

Tells the story of how the Slinky, the most popular toy in American history, was invented. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a commercial about the Slinky.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

A young girl has a wonderful idea to make the most MAGNIFICENT thing! But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl repeatedly tries and fails. Eventually, she quits, but a walk with her dog and time to think, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Create small groups. Pass out one of the challenges listed in the lesson plan/book card to each group for them to come up with an invention that will solve the problem at hand.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

Newsela is a database of current event stories organized by theme. Stories can be assigned to students according to their reading Lexile level. They are assessed with a short comprehension quiz and a writing prompt. Teachers can access data from student quizzes.

Everyone is talking about real and fake news. Even first graders are hearing their parents, teachers and journalists talking about it. Teachers should begin teaching media literacy skills as soon as students begin using the Internet. In the first grade, students will be visiting approved sites that most likely will still have advertisements. The students will learn how to distinguish between the advertisements and the actual content they are supposed to be using.

Use Draw and Tell with students who are new to using mobile apps, or those who want to color and draw digitally.It is a powerful introduction to young kids for creating digital stories with multimedia elements

Isatou Ceesay observed a growing problem in her community where people increasingly disposed of unwanted plastic bags, which accumulated into ugly heaps of trash. She found a way to be the agent of change by recycling the bags and transforming her community. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Use plastic bags to develop a new product (i.e. jump rope).

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

Students will use previous knowledge of Ozobots and coding to color code a path in a maze to create a snowman.

With encouragement and ideas from his family, Papa, based on the real-life inventor Lodner Phillips, builds a working submarine that takes his family on a ride to the bottom of Lake Michigan. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Students will use materials on hand to design a solution to a problem they see in their school or at home. The invention should meet the needs of fellow students, teachers, bus drivers, principals, siblings, friends, or even parents.

A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.

PenPal Schools is a global learning community where teachers can foster global awareness and understanding of a variety of cultures. Students are able to practice reading and writing skills, learn more about digital literacy, and gain social and emotional learning skills. PenPal Schools connects students from over 144 countries to learn together through collaborative online projects! The website is a safe environment that only registered students and teachers can take part in.

Students should begin at a young age to plan out their stories before they write them. There are resources that make the brainstorming task engaging for students so they get in the habit of mind mapping out their story or essay.

Students will design an effective presentation on which to share key information regarding a given topic or subject. Care will be taken to ensure that the presentation is visually appealing and contains a variety of images, graphics, and text.

These materials help educators use literature to get students excited about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) by actively involving them in the design thinking process. Each book shares a story where something was built or invented by designing, planning, gathering materials, and creating. There is a book card/lesson plan for each title that includes a maker-STEM connection; pre, during, and post questions; and a design challenge.

Students write an essay expressing their opinion, wherein they choose an influential person and explain why this person should be included within a list of most influential people of all time. In order to ensure that students are respecting the rights of others, they will use an online tool for generating citations to cite sources within a bibliography.

Students will use Google Slides to publish a writing piece with a partner by collaboratively typing their story, adding images to their slides, and creating links for readers to navigate their published book. This activity may take more than one class period.

Students will use Google Slides to publish a writing piece by typing their story, adding images to their slides, and creating links for readers to navigate their published book.

Students will use Google Slides to publish a writing piece by typing their story, adding images to their slides, and creating links for readers to navigate their published book. This activity may take more than one class period.

Use Epic to guide students to learn what a biography is, and have them find information about a specific person.