Digging a Little Deeper
1. Pick a dessert animal mentioned in the book. Draw it and write 5 facts. (yellow spotted lizard, tarantula, camel, rattlesnake, scorpion, gnats, donkey, pig, woodpecker, wolf, bird)
2. Find out if there is really a yellow-spotted lizard. Write one paragraph to report your findings. If there is no such lizard you write about lizards in general.
3. The “wreck room” is really supposed to be the “Rec” room, short for recreation. Make a list of 10 words that are shortened like that.
4. Holes takes place in Texas. Make a Venn Diagram comparing Texas to North Carolina.
5. Clyde Livingston was a famous baseball player in the book. Create a display page of your favorite major league baseball players or your favorite major league baseball team. You may want to include real baseball cards.
6. Write a camp song for the campers at Camp Green Lake to sing each day as they work. It should be a song about holes, of course! It should be to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”
7. Write a letter from Stanley to Derrick Dunne telling him how you feel about being bullied.
8. Georgia O’Keefe is an artist who draws desert scenes. Do some research on her work and write a paragraph to describe on of her paintings.
9. Have you ever been blamed for something you did not do? Write about that time or make up a story using a fictional character.
10. Design a brochure about Camp green lake, as if it were a “real” camp, like Stanley’s mom thinks it is. Turn the truth around a little, like Stanley does in his letter to her, so the camp sounds like a good place to be.
11. Zero and Stanley become good friends in the book. Think about friendship. Now finish this sentence and turn it into a one page essay about friendship. A good friend is someone who…
12. All of the boys in tent D have nicknames. Make a chart showing each boy’s real name, nickname, physical traits and personality traits.
13. Make a list of everyone in your family’s first names. Now make the palindromes, just like Stanley Yelnats. Start with your own name.
14. Make a list of 10 analogies to go with the book, Holes. Example: shovel:dig::canteen:drink.
15. Draw an illustration of an event in the story. Write a caption for it.
16. Pretend you are a newspaper reporter reporting on the “Sunflower Seed Incident”.
17. Read a non fiction AR book about reptiles or another desert animal. Take and AR test on it. You must make an 80 or above to earn a hole for this.
18. Make a bubble map to describe the warden. Draw her picture in the middle of the map.
19. Make a BEWARE poster warning people about yellow-spotted lizards. Include a description, why they are dangerous, where they are found, and what you should do if you run into one! It should include a picture of one!
20. Make a board game that goes with Holes. Include questions from the story.
21. Make up Jeopardy questions to go with Holes. Include the questions and the answers. You must have at least 20.
22. Create a WANTED poster of an outlaw. The name should be an alliteration. It should also have what they are in trouble for, where they were last seen, how to capture them. There should also be a reward offered for their capture.