Christiane Dorion learning resources

Creative activities inspired by How the World Began and How Animals Live

CFE Levels First and Second (age 6-11)

About these resources

These resources are inspired by Christiane Dorion’s wonderful illustrated books How The World Began and How Animals Live. The books can be a great jumping off point to these activities, but you don’t need to own the books to do the activities.

The activities cover a wide range of curricular areas and are designed to be fun and creative, giving your pupils the opportunity to explore different topics using a variety of active learning approaches.

About Christiane Dorion

Christiane Dorion is a children’s author and a tireless advocate for environmental issues. She was born in Quebec City in Canada and studied geography at university before completing a Masters in Education. In 1987 she came to live in the UK to complete a PhD in environmental education, and was a key contributor to the guidelines for environmental education in the National Curriculum. She also ran the WWF’s education programme for eight years. She now works with Forum for the Future, an organisation devoted to sustainable development.

Christiane always wanted to be a children’s writer and began writing in 2002. Her beautifully illustrated pop-up books are a fascinating introduction to our world and the creatures in it for young children. In 2011, How the World Works won the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize.

How the World Began

Planets poetryEng 2-31a

It can be difficult for children to understand that other planets are very different from our own. However, these wonderful close up images from the Telegraph website can give them a much better idea of what the planets in our solar system look like:

Ask pupils to compose a poem which makes use of metaphors to describe each planet. How would they describe each planet, and what can they compare each planet to? They can use the images in Appendix 1 for reference. For instance:

Jupiter is a messy child’s bedroom, colours swirling everywhere,

Mercury is an empty car park, grey as far as the eye can see...

Building and design challengesTch 1-12a, Tch 2-12a

The book shows ancient civilisations like the Sumerians developing basic tools and buildings. To help pupils understand what it must have been like to go through the trial and error process of designing tools and structures, you can get them taking part in some design challenges.

The ‘Inspiration from Nature’ activity on this page introduces pupils to bio mimicry, the process of taking inspiration from natural processes to come up with a design solution to meet human needs: You can find brilliant videos to support this activity here:

Try this one on the Scholastic website, where pupils are given the task of building a load-bearing bridge with only a few basic materials:

This simple bridge building activity is again focused on the concept of improving an initial design:

This design challenge from the Science Museum tasks pupils with building a tower from very simple materials:

Wishes for the EarthExa 2-02a, Scn 2-20a

Ask your pupils to produce a mural of planet Earth on your classroom wall. Ask them to annotate the mural with their wishes for the future of the planet. You could take inspiration from this design:

Producing a mural is a good opportunity to get the children thinking about the suitability of different materials for such a project. You could ask them to think of different ways to produce the mural. They’ll need to produce all the continents and seas, so what is the best way to do this? Would they use watercolours, spray paints, acrylics or pastels? Or would they make their mural out of fabrics?

Prompt them with ideas for their wishes. Is there an endangered species of animal they’d like to see protected? Is there something they want for their local community, like a park or cycle lanes? What problems would they like to see fixed? Would they like to see some new inventions to tackle problems in the world?

You could start a class blog and post photos of your earth mural to share with the world. If you want to make sure your pupils get an audience for their blog, try quadblogging – find out more here: You could ask other pupils from around the world to tell your class their wishes for the earth!

Make your own pop up books about inventionsLit 2-14a,Lit 2-25a

How the World Began talks about inventions that defined the world as we know it today. You could ask your pupils to come up with a class list of the top ten inventions that have impacted their lives, and then produce a pop up book showing how some of these inventions worked. In this blog, a primary school class explain how they designed their own pop up books – these ones are on the topic of space, but the idea can easily be modified to show inventions at work:

Give your pupils a genuine audience for the book by asking them to share their books with younger pupils and getting them to explain the concepts in the book to the younger children, using their pop ups as a visual aid!

StargazingScn 2-06a

Introduce your pupils to stars with the following resources:

  • This page explains star formation and the life cycle of a star:
  • This presentation shows pupils how a star is different from a planet:
  • This resource can introduce your pupils to what a star is, and also includes a presentation on constellations:
  • To help pupils understand how far stars are away from us, you can use this fascinating and beautiful short film. Although it makes no mention of stars besides the sun, it’s a clear demonstration of how far apart the planets are in our own solar system: imagine then that stars are even further away!

To help your pupils consolidate all they have learned about stars, you could try the following activities:

  • Create a presentation about the life of a star. They can do this in different ways. They can create a PowerPoint or stop motion animation; alternatively, they could create a tableau. A tableau is a series of photographs telling a story in stages. Your pupils could represent the life cycle of a star by arranging themselves in different positions for each photograph: for example, they could represent gases coming together to form a star by huddling together.
  • Paint the life stages of a star. You could ask different groups of pupils to paint different stages of the life cycle of a star, and bring them together to display on the wall. Alternatively, you could ask pupils to paint some constellations.
  • Create a scale model of the solar system. You can find a fun way to do this with toilet paper in the BBC resource mentioned earlier!

After this, your pupils might be keen to see the night sky and record what they see! You can find a fantastic pack with lots of activities, some of which can be done inside, at the BBC website:

This sheet can also help guide your pupils as they search for constellations in the night sky:

Investigating gravity for young children Scn 1-07a

To introduce young pupils to the idea of gravity and air resistance, you could have a look at this excellent activity:

How Animals Live

Match animals to their habitatsScn 1-01a

The book describes the different animals which live in different kinds of habitats across the world. For very young children, this activity on the TES website (you’ll need to create a free TES login) is a great way to reinforce learning about animals and habitats:

For slightly older or higher ability pupils, you can set them the matching task in Appendix 2, where they match animals to habitats based on clues.

This task can make a nice precursor to the next activity on evolution.

Accessible EvolutionLit 2-14a, Lit 2-25a

Tell your pupils that their task is to write a guide to evolution for younger pupils which will make the concept accessible.

First, they’ll need to learn all about evolution. Try the following activities:

  • Ask your pupils what features of the human body they would find most useful to change or enhance in some way. Would they choose to be faster? Taller? Would they choose to enhance any one of their senses? Ask them to explain the reasons for their choices.
  • Explain that nature works in this way. A process called natural selection means that animals develop features which help them adapt to their environments. The following Discovery Channel video explains this in the case of elephants:
  • Show the pupils the following animals, and ask them why they think they have the features that they do: cheetah (speed), giraffes, chameleons, rhinos and beavers.
  • Natural selection means that the animals best suited to their environment survive and evolve, and the ones less suited become extinct. This page explains a little bit more:
  • You can have fun getting your pupils to guess the reasons these birds have their distinctive beaks!

Next, they need to be very clear about the information they want to share with younger pupils about each animal. Sometimes the simplest way to do this is to write down five headings: What, Where, When, Why and How. Ask pupils to come up with questions based on these headings. For instance, what features does an elephant have, where does it live, when did it first appear on Earth and when did it begin to change, why are its features useful, and how do they work?

Next, they’ll need to decide what kind of text they want to produce. If they want to produce a leaflet, what kind of features would make it more accessible and interesting for younger children? The same goes for posters, presentations, infographics, etc.

Here are some videos and pages to help your pupils’ research:

  • Why do elephants have trunks? A video from the BBC:
  • Another video from the BBC, this time about giraffes:
  • This short video explains what beavers use their teeth for:
  • This video explains some of the features chameleons use to protect themselves:
  • This page explains how the rhinoceros has evolved over time:

A simpler evolution activity - write a safari guide

If you want to consolidate the learning about evolution in a quicker way, you could ask pupils to write a guide for someone going on safari who is likely to see the animals you’ve been discussing. The guide would tell readers about the animals, their habitats and the features that help them thrive.

You’ll obviously need to focus on African animals, so some good contenders would be the cheetah, elephant, giraffe, hippo, rhino and chameleon.

Create your own zoo LIT 1-09a, LIT 1-14a, LIT 1-28a, Exa 1-03a

For younger pupils, the book can open up great opportunities for research, numeracy, role play and parental involvement. Why not get your pupils to open up their own zoo?

Explain to the pupils that their first task is to find out all about the animals in a zoo. What do they eat, where do they come from and what are their babies called? What other interesting facts can your pupils find out? Aside from How Animals Live, National Geographic’s Kids website is a great place for you to find out some interesting facts to pass on to your pupils:

Help your pupils come up with their own fun facts. For instance, a tiger can weigh up to 363 kg and measure up to 3.3m, so how does this compare to other animals? How many cats would need to stand on a scale to reach the tiger’s weight? How many tigers could fit inside your classroom?

After this, ask the pupils to paint pictures of different animals, depicting one fun fact about the animal.

Once the paintings are done, it’s time to create your zoo! Arrange the paintings around the classroom – this will give the pupils a chance to sort the animals into categories, just like in a zoo. Invite parents in and let the children tell them all about the animals. They can build or set up a makeshift reception desk, where they can ask for money and hand over tickets and guide leaflets with ‘maps’ of the zoo. Ask small groups of children to be ‘zookeepers’ for individual areas, so they can be designated experts about the animals in that area. Get them to entertain parents with the fun facts they have learned about the animals!

Write some song lyricsExa 1-18a

Most of us know at least the first verse from the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Can you get your pupils to make up some more verses with different lyrics? For instance, ‘the monkey swings tonight’, ‘the parrot squawks tonight’, ‘the leopard climbs tonight’, ‘the tiger roars tonight’ and so on.

Write a poem from a dragonfly’s point of viewEng 2-31a

The life cycle of a dragonfly can make for a great poem! Ask your pupils to find out all about dragonflies first. The following resources may help:

  • A website all about dragonflies:
  • The BBC’s dragonfly videos:
  • This short film from National Geographic, although some of the language is quite complex:
  • This dragonfly video is more accessible for younger children:

After this, you could choose to guide your pupils in how to structure the poem, or let them come up with suggestions. The simplest way to go about a poem would be a story of the dragonfly’s life, describing what it can see, hear, touch, taste and feel at every stage of its life cycle.

If you want to try and find different ways of structuring a poem, try asking your pupils to write the word ‘dragonfly’ on a piece of paper and mind map everything that comes to mind. Examine some of their ideas and see if these can form the basis for a poem.

The urban jungleHWB 2-13a

This activity can help increase your pupils’ awareness of how they can help sustain urban wildlife. First of all, ask them if they can think of animals which live in and around town. If you want to build in more kinaesthetic learning to this element of the task, you can ask them to produce a pop up model of their school or home using folded A4 card, and get them to draw the animals which they think can be found nearby (they could also make these animals out of playdough). See some example of pop up houses below:

Once they’re finished, discuss how they could attract more wildlife to their home or school by providing shelter or food. The following websites may be helpful:

  • BBC video explaining how to build an insect habitat:
  • This website explains how to make a home for hedgehogs:
  • These spotter sheets can help your pupils identify the creatures that come to visit:

Weird and wonderful animalsLit 2-29a

Ask your pupils to research some of the ‘weird and wonderful’ sea creatures in How Animals Live. Ask them to pick one creature and write a persuasive piece from the point of view of the creature, arguing that it is the most wonderful of the weird creatures. They should make use of persuasive language and techniques, perhaps comparing themselves favourably to the other creatures.

Appendix 1 – pictures of planets

Appendix 2 – Match animals to their habitats

Match each animal to its habitat, based on the clues given.

Image credits

Images of planets

Jupiter and Mars image by NASA/JPL/USGS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Mercury image by NASA/JPL/USGS [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Venus image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Uranus image by NASA/JPL/Voyager mission (edited by Orange-kun) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Saturn image by NASA ( [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Images of animals and habitats

Image of cheetah: By Mukul2u (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons

Image of chimpanzee: By Chi King (chimpanzee) [CC BY 2.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons

Image of bear by Bobisbob at English Wikipedia (Original text: Nickles, Jon) ([1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Image of alligator by Gareth Rasberry (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons

Image of African plains: By Bjørn Christian Tørrissen [CC BY-SA 3.0 ( via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Daintree rainforest: By Killerscene (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Image of Bone Cave Entrance by Anne Burgess cave at under Creative Commons by SA 2.0

Image of marshland by Hillebrand Steve, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons