Explorer’s Guides help you lead kids deep into great books!
Experience is the best teacher, second only to you. When you take kids through great books in hands-on ways, you’re teaching them for life.
Our straight-from-the-story activities connect to key teaching points. So while your kids are having fun doing something a character did, they’re learning what that character learned.
That might be a survival tip, a gymnastics trick, a writing skill, a history lesson, or any of ten thousand things that are good to know.
But most importantly, with your guidance, they’ll learn what they have to know:
That person got through something hard, and so can I.
You’re the best teacher to lead them to that truth, and we’re here to help.
See one right here right now!
Each Explorer’s Guide includes everything below:
- sensory prop ideas: see, hear, smell, and feel what the characters did
- bookbites ideas: taste what the characters ate
- creative project ideas & instructions/templates: make what a character made
- kinetic activity ideas & instructions/prompts: do what a character did (or might/should have!)
- academic handouts: learn the story’s narrative arc, vocabulary, setting, and more
- creative writing handouts: write what a character wrote or felt
- takeaway topics: know what the characters knew
- learning links: learn more about what the characters’ world was like
- audiovisual links: see and hear what the characters’ world looked and sounded like
- CCSS alignment: check off lots of boxes!
For the books on our current teaching schedule, we even sell LitWits Kits (boxes of supplies)–check the schedule here.
How to use our Explorer’s Guides in your home or classroom
Just pull the parts that work for you and your kids! Even in a single activity or BookBites snack, we’ve given you lots to talk about. (Don’t feel you have to hold a half-day workshop like we did — good grief, who has time for that? That’s why homeschool parents in Santa Cruz have been sending their kids to us since 2010!)
Questions? Check out our FAQ, or get in touch with us.
Visit our store to see all the books we've ``done!``
It’s amazing how much kids learn while they’re “just” having fun. Here’s how and why!
We hold experiential workshops for kids in Santa Cruz.
Then we turn those workshops into online Explorer’s Guides.