If you have any ideas that you’re willing to share, e-mail me at mcarthur@apk.net

FOR A QUICK DISPLAY: Take any good-sized potted plant and drape some colorful socks on it. Or to make a Plant That Ate Dirty Socks out of paper to mount on a wall or decorate a door, fourth grade teacher Nancy Blake of Thomas Jefferson Elementary suggests wide green ribbon is a quick way to make the vines. To add tendrils, she twisted green pipe cleaners around a pencil to shape them into spirals.

FOR A FUNNY SIGN: Lake Elementary media specialist Ginnie Jeschelnig posted one on the door proclaiming "Warning! Sock-Eating Plant in Media Center. Keep shoes on at all times!"

FOR DISPLAYING PROGRESS TOWARD READING GOALS: Many schools have made plants that started in the center of the school with vines that reached down the halls throughout the building. Children add paper leaves and socks with their names and favorite books as they reach their goals. Or this can be done in just one classroom. At Plain Center Elementary, the principal, Phil Smith, vowed to eat a sock if his students met their reading goals. They did, and he tried, chewing mightily, but it just wouldn’t go down.

FOR GOOD DEEDS: St. Albert the Great School built a huge plant in the hall and called it The Plant That Grew Clean Socks for the Needy. As the children met their reading goals, they each donated a pair of new socks to hang on the plant. When I visited, their plant had 300 pairs and was still growing. (They also got class cake or pizza parties for reaching their goals.) The socks were given to a local charity.

FOR A THEME: "Read Your Socks Off" or "Sock it to Reading."

Crestwood Elementary School went all out with the "Sock it to Reading " theme (in conjunction with an author visit, but any of these things could be used on a smaller scale):

In addition to the emphasis on reading, children wrote sock-shaped stories and poems.

The art teacher led a tie-dyed socks project with the help of some parents. The socks were worn later for 20-minute sock hops in the gym (although a sock hop would be fun even with regular everyday socks).

Students created short plays with sock puppets.

Two large artificial plants in the lobby served as a quiet reading area with chairs. A contest was held to name the plants.

Students designed paper socks to post on their lockers. Each class chose a best sock to be placed on vines in the office window.

One of the themes stressed was caring about family and others (exemplified by Stanley and Fluffy being part of the family and the boys and plants caring about each other).

FOR FUN: Crazy socks day, wearing mismatched or funny ones. Kids also come up with funny ways to wear regular socks.

FOR A MYSTERY UNIT: Fifth-grade teacher Lorraine Moore combined "The Mystery of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks" with an abridged version of Poe’s "The Purloined Letter" and a Sherlock Holmes story (both of which are mentioned in Michael and Norman’s attempts to play detective). Reading mysteries is an enjoyable way to apply logical thinking (which we also use in everyday life to find things we have lost or misplaced). Poe’s idea of hiding something in plain sight can prompt some good classroom or library puzzlers.

FOR A SPACE FLIGHT UNIT: "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Up in Space" involves the real space shuttle, on which Stanley goes into orbit as a plant experiment while Michael’s school runs simulated missions, a good launch for learning more about space flight. In the book, the school has a teleconference with an astronaut while he is up in space. NASA has wonderful materials for schools, including a videotape of such a teleconference ("The Physics of Toys in Space") in which four astronauts talk to the elementary schools they attended as children and demonstrate experiments that students submitted involving toys.

FOR RELATING TO A FIELD TRIP TO A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: Michael and Norman visit a natural history museum twice – first in "The Escape of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks" (p. 58-60) when they see two huge dinosaur skeletons. These are actually the ones in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. On their second visit to the same museum in "More Adventures of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks," they spend the night at a sleepover event for children during an exhibit of robot dinosaurs (p. 33-72) and visit a fossil dig (p. 75-82).

FOR RELATING TO A FIELD TRIP TO A ZOO RAINFOREST: In "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets A Girlfriend," Michael and Norman and their family and the Sparks children visit a zoo rainforest building (p. 60-70). Children in northern Ohio will recognize this as the one at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, although other such places have similar things to see.

FOR FUN WITH FACTS: In "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Gets A Girlfriend," Michael and Sarah do what his mom calls "dueling plant facts" when they keep trying to top each other with amazing information. Assign each student a plant to research (including where it was originally found, how it got its name, anything unusual about it). Choose a category - plants that produce food or live in the rainforest or wetlands, or everyday house or garden plants, or trees, or the world’s weirdest plants. Carnivorous ones are always fascinating. In "The Secret of the Plant That Ate Dirty Socks," Michael’s class reports on the favorite houseplants they have brought in for the school’s Pet Plant Day (p. 79-81). In "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks Goes Hollywood," which involves a swamp, they do research on wetlands (p. 14-16).

FOR A FACT-FINDING SCAVENGER HUNT: Students can fan out through the school in teams looking for anything that came from plants and make lists of what they find.

FOR DIRTY SOCKS COOKIES: Use a sock-shaped cookie cutter (often found among Christmas cookie cutters) on rolled-out dough. If you can’t find a cutter, make a pattern of light cardboard or stiff paper and cut around it with a table knife. Bake and cover with white frosting. Add some little chocolate frosting smears in a few spots to make them look "dirty." Or, if you’re game to supervise what could be a great mess, provide several colors of frosting, sprinkles, chocolate chips, etc. and let kids decorate the cookies in their own style.

FOR AN EASY CONTEST: Lakewood Public Library set up a "guess how many socks are in the basket" contest in a display case with a plant, a small plastic basket (like a laundry basket) heaped with colorful socks, a package of laundry detergent, all the Plant books, and a clothes line with paper socks clothes-pinned on it with messages on them – "Win a Prize" – "Entry blanks in Children’s Room" – "One entry per person" and the deadline. Prizes were books.

FOR OTHER PRIZES: One school did a trivia contest about the Plant books on the P.A. for several mornings. Prizes displayed in the office included green pencils with little sprigs of plastic leaves glued on, pairs of socks (shown in a picnic basket labeled "Plant Food") and small live potted plants.

FOR A FUNNY PET PLANT DAY: Children and/or teachers can bring in houseplants, both live and artificial. At Dillon School ribbons were awarded with plenty of humor for categories like smallest, cutest, creepiest, best-dressed (won by a small cactus wearing a very small football jersey and helmet), etc. The category possibilities for fun are endless.

FOR A PRACTICAL COMPOSING UNIT: www.treetures.com/Stomerteach.htm

FOR A GREAT LIST OF PLANT-THEMED WEB SITES AND LESSON PLANS: www.theteacherscorner.net

FOR ACTIVITIES for "The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks (and nine other popular humorous middle-grade novels): "Contracts for Independent Readers: Grades 4-6 - Humor" (TEC790) published by The Education Center, www.themailbox.com

TO CELEBRATE CHILDREN'S BOOK WEEK (in November) OR YOUNG PEOPLE'S POETRY WEEK (in April): Get details from Children's Book Council www.cbcbooks.org

IF YOUR HAVE TALENTED ASPIRING WRITERS in your class who want to try to get published, get this book: "The Young Writers Guide to Getting Published" by Kathy Henderson (Writers Digest Books).

GOOD BOOKS TO EXPLAIN TO CHILDREN HOW AUTHORS WRITE (and to grownups as well): "What Do Authors Do" by Eileen Christelow and "Author Talk" edited by Leonard S. Marcus.

In the book Megan makes her own dollhouse out of a cardboard box, using throwaway objects and materials to furnish it. This is an excellent story for a recycling theme. Many classes have been inspired to do the same with great creative results. One kindergarten class used shoeboxes to make rooms. In another school older children each made a shoebox room and then put them all together for what looked like an enormous apartment building. Sometimes boys make "club houses" instead of houses. There are unlimited possibilities. One class did a whole little street of cardboard houses with garages. The resourcefulness and creativity that children come up with, especially for the furnishings, are wonderful.

This story revolves around the Peter Piper tongue-twister. A class can have fun learning to say the whole thing slowly in unison, perhaps in rap rhythm, and then build up to doing it very fast. They can also learn some of the other traditional ones.

Children can make up their own tongue-twisters using words beginning with the first initial of their own names or drawing lots for letters of the alphabet so everyone has a different one. They start with making a list of some words beginning with that letter and choose some to make sentences for their original tongue-twisters.

Some classes have written about what they would put in a buried treasure. Some have actually buried one. A first grade buried a plastic box containing their class picture with notes and little objects from each child. The custodian dug the hole near the school’s front door. They planned to dig up their "treasure" and get their stuff back when they are in fifth grade, before they move on to middle school.

Teachers have brought small tents into the classroom – as in the story, one for the boys and one for the girls – with blankets or sleeping bags, flashlights for reading, and snacks. Children take turns reading in the tents and can also act out scenes from the book.

Does anyone have any good ideas for this one? Let me know!