On London

Making Missions are activities I occasionally devise for the kids. The missions are Top Secret, but I have been allowed special permission to share them with you here. This one is a creative writing exercise which was really just for Lily.

Making Mission: Be an Alien!

Your mission is to imagine you’re an alien visiting planet Earth for the first time.

You must choose 3 everyday objects from around the house, objects that might be familiar to a human but which your alien eyes are seeing for the first time.

You need to send a report about these objects back to your alien friends.

The report

First choose a name for the object – remember, you don’t know what name humans use for it!

Next describe the shape. Try starting at one end of the object and work your way to the other end, describing the shape and appearance of each part. Remember that because you don’t know how the object is used, you don’t know which parts of the object are more important, so describe each part with equal importance.

Finally you could write an idea about how humans might use the object. You’ve never actually seen a human in person but you have seen photos and videos of them, so you know some basic human features like hands, eyes etc.

Try and make your idea quite different to the real purpose of the object!

Mission Complete!

Once your report is ready you can read it to family & friends – see if they can guess what objects the alien encountered!