Catherine Rayner Learning Resources

Catherine Rayner learning resources

Fun, cross-curricular activities inspired by Smelly Louieand Solomon Crocodile

CFE levels Early and First (ages 5-8)

Note to teachers using this resource

This resource is full of cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Smelly Louieand Solomon Crocodile with your students. Adapt and use as you see fit! .

This resource has been produced to support our Scottish Friendly Children's Book Tour with Catherine Rayner, but you can use them at any point to create an exciting cross-curricular project based on Smelly Louieor Solomon Crocodile.

About Catherine Rayner

Catherine Rayner is a multi award-winning author and illustrator who has been delighting children and parents ever since her first picture book, Augustus and His Smile, was published in 2006. Beautifully illustrated animal characters can be found everywhere in Catherine’s work, from the troublesome croc in 2011’s Solomon Crocodile to the curious hare in 2008’s Harris Finds His Feet (the winner of the 2009 Kate Greenaway Medal). Catherine lives in Edinburgh with her husband, son and pets, including her grey cat Ena who continues to inspire her work!

Activities for Smelly Louie

Exploring the five senses (SCN 0-12a)

If the five senses is a new topic for your pupils, you can introduce it by taking them on a ‘sensory walk’ through your playground, a woodland or any other area which offers stimulation for all five senses (give them a piece of fruit or other snack as they walk to incorporate taste). When they come back to class, ask them questions about what they saw, heard, touched, tasted and smelled on their walk. Explain that these are a human’s five senses.[1]

There are lots of activities available at the TES website to follow up with work on other senses. Here’s a good example (you’ll need to create a free TES login):

Follow up activity for the senses – story writing(Lit 0-31a)

Tell your pupils that they are going to imagine that they are a dog and are going on a walk to the places they have just visited. They are going to do a piece of writing describing what the dog sees, hears, smells, touches and tastes as it goes on its walk. They should also try and describes its thoughts and feelings as it experiences different things.

If you want pupils to write a story instead of just a descriptive piece, you can introduce some problems or surprises the dog might face on its journey! For instance, it could lose its favourite toy or forget where the pond is; whose help will the dog seek out to resolve these situations? It could also be called upon to help out with something: perhaps another dog is lost and the dog must help to find it!

To differentiate this activity for younger pupils, you can make it a story building activity rather than a story writing one. This helps to build the skills necessary to create a story without doing any writing. Gather pupils in small groups if you can – around six pupils is good – and start them off by giving them the stimulus of the dog character. Sometimes for younger pupils it’s great to give them a physical stimulus like a soft toy or a picture to pass round. Ask the pupils open questions to engage their imagination and get the story started: for instance, who is this dog? Where is he going? Who might he belong to?

After this, ask open questions to get ideas from the pupils to help you build the story. As they give you ideas, you can select the ones which are most useful to move the story forward. You should be looking for a problem or surprise for the dog to move things forward. Ask questions to tease this out: how is the dog feeling today? How can he change that? For instance, he may have lost his owner and needs to find them. What obstacles will the dog face?

As the story develops, you need to create some record of it to help pupils keep track of the plot: you can note down developments on the board, use props to signify plot points, perhaps use photographs you took on your walk, or ask pupils to act sections out.

It’s quite important to create an ending that everyone is happy with. How is the conflict of the story resolved? For instance, if the dog lost his owner, what do they decide to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? How does finding his owner make the dog feel?

These storybuilding ideas are taken from The Little Book of Storybuilding:

Another story writing activity – Louie and the bath(Lit 0-31a)

Louie really hates baths, but the story seems to suggest that they are a daily occurrence he can’t avoid. If your pupils were Louie, how might they try to avoid a bath – would they hide? Climb up a tree? Perhaps even substitute another, similar-looking dog to take their place? You can discuss ideas as a class if you have some less confident writers.

Make some bath toys(Tch 0-12a)

Louie might like baths a bit better if he had some toys to play with. Challenge your pupils to make some bath toys for Louie. Here are some sets of instructions to start you off:

• Bath bombs:
• Sponges can be cut up into all kinds of shapes, including ones that Louie might like (dogs, cats, foxes, etc). If you want something a little more advanced, try this cooling sponge necklace: The tutorial is here:

Colour mixing(Exa 1-02a, Exa 1-03a)

Louie’s coat is mostly made up of white, very light blues and pinks when he first gets out the bath. But afterwards, his coat is much darker shades of green and brown with some yellow too. This is a nice opportunity for your pupils to learn about colour mixing.

Ask your pupils to draw two outlines of a dog. This fun video might help them!

Give pupils paint palettes with blue, red, yellow, white and black in them.

Tell them that they going to paint the dog after it’s just had a bath. It needs to be blue, white and pink. They’ve got white paint, but the shades of blue they have will probably be too dark, and they don’t have pink. What can they do?

Explain to your pupils that white can be added to the primary colours to make them lighter. Demonstrate how to add white to blue and then to red: this should give you the shades you need for a post-bath dog! Get the pupils mixing their paints until they have these shades too.

After this, they can paint their first dog! Sponge painting might be better than brush painting, as the colours should really blend into each other at least a little.

Once they’ve finished this, they need to paint the dog after it’s been rolling in the mud, raking in the bins and suchlike! They need dark shades of green and brown, along with some yellow. How are they going to get the green and brown? Explain and demonstrate to them how you can mix together blue and yellow to make green, and mix together red and green to make brown. After this, they can mix their own paints and work on their second dogs.

Run or walk a daily mile(HWB 1-25a)

One huge benefit of owning a dog is the exercise you can get from walking it every day! But you don’t need a dog to make sure you get in your daily activity.

One way might be to adopt St. Ninian’s Primary School’s hugely successful and inspiring Daily Mile initiative. This project saw pupils going for a one mile jog every day, and resulted in huge benefits for health and wellbeing and also learning, as children were more focused in class. It was also unanimously popular with parents![2]

Sing some bathtime songs(EXA 0-17a)

There are some great bathtime songs on YouTube. Here are two to start you off:

• CBeebies Bathtime Song:
• Ernie from Sesame Street sings Rubber Ducky:

If you and your pupils loved Smelly Louie

Try the books on these great book lists!

• 10 Books About Dogs:

• 10 Books About Pets:

Activities for Solomon Crocodile

Splatter Painting EXA 0-02a

This messy activity is a lot of fun. You might want to try this outside!

Draw a picture of Solomon Crocodile then splatter paint him to match the one in the book.

Dip an old toothbrush into some watercolour paint. Run a finger, or a comb, along the bristles to spray the paint on the paper.

You could also try dipping a paint brush in the paint and then tapping it above the paper.

Crocodile Fact File LIT 0-14a, LIT 1-06a, LIT 1-28a

Solomon the Crocodile lives down by the river. See what you can find out about crocodiles and some of the other animals in the book.

Make a display about the different animals.

Leaf printing/pictures EXA 0-02a, EXA 1-02a

Collect leaves from outside. Dip them in paint and make leaf prints, or create collages of different kinds of leaves. When you’ve completed the leaf pictures, you can add in all the other features of the river – including Solomon.

Speech Bubbles LIT 0-26a, LIT 1-09b, LIT 0-31a

Add speech bubbles to the pictures. What do you think Solomon should say to the animals?

Character voices EXA 0-12a, EXA 1-12a

Retell the story using your own character voices. Can your class sing like dragonflies? Squawk like the storks?

Solomon Says (Simon Says) HWB 0-22a, MTH 0-17a

Play a game of Simon Says. You could use the actions from the book, such as jump like a frog or flap like a stork.

Counting MNU 0-03a, MNU 1-01

Explore the pages of the book. There are lots of dragonflies, frogs, hippos and other animals. Estimate how many of each animal are on the page. Can your class count them

What happens next? LIT 0-09b, Lit 0-31a

What do Solomon and the other crocodile get up to? Draw a picture to show what happens next.

Act it out! EXA 1-12a, EXA 2-12a, EXA 0-01a, EXA 2-14a,

Follow this simple guide for adapting picture books into drama. Work together as a class to perform the book for parents and other pupils in your school.

If you and your pupils loved Solomon Crocodile

Check out some of the books on our 10 Snappy Reads list:

[1] Credit for this activity goes to mariyahali on TES:

[2] Thanks to St. Ninian’s Primary School for letting us feature this activity! Find out more on pages 42-25 of this presentation: