Harry and the Haunted House

Readers can follow Harry and his friends into a 'deliciously scary' adventure. As is the case with all Living Books titles, the words are highlighted on the screen as the story is being told, so the children can increase their word recognition skills. Readers can also enjoy the interactive play each screen presents.

Description of Classroom Activities

Show Your Feelings - the characters in Harry and the Haunted House, like people, experience a wide range of emotions during their adventure. In this activity, children brainstorm words to describe characters’ feelings and then develop scenarios for them. Predict how these friends would react to new situations.

Shadowy Friends - Harry and his friends mistook their own shadows for hidden fiends. Your children can also create dark illusions by designing shadow puppets to re-enact Harry’s adventures. Then encourage them to create original puppet productions.

Secret Messages - in one of the rooms in the haunted house there is a bottle with a message in it. Many mystery stories involve secret messages. This activity uses secret writing to send messages. This activity could be used for questions with answers in invisible writing, or using codes.

Descriptive Diamantes - Harry and the Haunted House is full of descriptive language that can be used as an exciting springboard for writing activities. In this lesson, children incorporate adjectives from the story into an original diamante, a simple poetic structure.

Jokers - Harry and the Haunted House is full of jokes, both visual and verbal. In this activity, children explore and record a series of knock-knock jokes on page 5 of the CD-ROM version of the story. Then they create their own.

I Spy the Secret Spider - observant explorers can find a spider on every page of the electronic version of Harry and the Haunted House.

Cartoon Creations - create comic pages with dialogue. Then use these as a springboard for mini plays.

Insect Explorations - Harry’s friends are trailed by cavorting ladybirds and serenading worms. Their shenanigans are hardly what you’d expect from the standard insect world. In this activity, children examine real creepy crawlies, observe their behaviour and compare the real insect characteristics with the fictitious ones.

The Eyes Have It - Harry and his friends see visions of non-existent monsters and translate innocuous sounds into threatening beasts. Their senses are influenced by their imaginations and fears. This activity helps children discover how eyes work. The following activity, Don’t Believe Everything You See, shows how our eyes, like Harry’s and his friends’, can be fooled.

Don’t Believe Everything You See - Harry and his comrades are frequently fooled by what they think they see. This activity explores simple tricks that challenge accurate vision.

Hear All About It - Harry and the Haunted House is filled with sounds, both scary and delightful. What is sound? In this activity children learn how sound is made and how the brain processes this sensory information.

Dancing Rhythms - Harry and the Haunted House is rich in music and dance of all kinds and styles. In this activity, your children explore on-screen dancers, imitate their rhythms and movements, and develop dance routines of their own.

The Same Game - Harry, Amy, Stinky, Earl and Spot have a lot in common. Let’s take a close look at them to identify both their similarities and differences. First, we’ll examine physical attributes. Then we’ll compare personalities.

Comparing Characters - the characters in Harry and the Haunted House all have distinct personalities. This activity analyses them, and then encourages children to look at their own character traits. Follow-up to the previous activity.

A Tangled Web - the secret spider appears on each screen of Harry and the Haunted House. What patterns does it make with its web? Children design webs using straight lines and curves. This leads to curve stitching, and possibly simple knitting, crochet or embroidery.

It’s Not My Fault! - being part of a community confers both rights and responsibilities on the members. Children explore the episode on screen 1 of Harry and the Haunted House where the animals try to find a scapegoat who should go to the haunted house, and their solution - joint responsibility. What parallels can the children draw from this in their own lives.

Do You Believe in Ghosts? - this activity looks at beliefs and world religions. Starting from ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ and passing through believing in fairies, to the beliefs of major world religions.

Where Have all the Birds Gone? - in several screens of Harry and the Haunted House, birds appear from a part of the screen, and then leave. This activity looks at birds which migrate to, from or through the British Isles, and tracks their movements. It also explores the reasons for these migratory movements.

What Happened Next? - the animals in Harry and the Haunted House reach a crisis point as they stand outside the gate. What shall they do - go on and try to find the ball, or go back and cut their losses? Children start from this point and write their own versions of the story, preferably before they have seen the rest of the disk. Using the puppets, or acting themselves, they dramatise their stories.

Give Me a Clue - the door to the house is open, no one comes when they ring the bell, the paper is still on the mat. This is the start of a mystery - what possible solutions are there to the mystery.

House Detectives - various clues appear during Harry and the Haunted House as to the age of the house. There are beams in the front room, the kitchen has a range, the rooms are high, the internal doors are panelled. This activity encourages children to explore the features of either Victorian houses - starting from the kitchen range, or Tudor houses, starting from the beamed ceilings.

What Does a Skeleton Look Like? - there are numerous skeletons in Harry and the Haunted House. This activity looks at the major bones and provides activities for making puppets from them.

Make it Rhyme - this activity suggests that the children try to make a rhyming story from Harry and the Haunted House. Simple stanzas are offered for children to add rhymes to, but you could give them as much or as little help as you feel they need.

Make a Plan - this activity shows the area where the characters were playing ball from a slightly different angle, and asks children to place the houses and the characters in sensible places. Following this, there is a map, a bird’s eye view, of the area for children to place the articles on.

Playing the Game - the characters are all playing ball at the beginning of the story. Later, the ladybirds play a skipping game and play draughts. What sort of games are popular and why? Children survey and graph favourite games.

If I Were Shipwrecked… - there are many stories about shipwrecked sailors throwing messages in bottles into the sea, and the bottles coming ashore long afterwards. This activity looks at what the children would do if they were shipwrecked, and what they might expect to find on a desert island.

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