Aliens for Lunch Lesson Plans

Aliens For Lunch is part of  Stephanie Spinner and John Etra’s series of adventures for grades 2 to 4. The first in the series is Aliens for Breakfast and then there’s Aliens For Dinner. The series stopped there, though we may in the future see Aliens for Afternoon Tea, Aliens for Elevenses, and Aliens for Midnight Snack.

There are nine chapters in the book, so we like to read a chapter a day for a couple of weeks. Have a class set and read the story individually, following each chapter with discussion, or read a chapter aloud every day. Once you’ve read the book, it’s time to move on to some more learning opportunities.

Figure out the structure of the story. Here are some neat ways to do that:

• Make a timeline showing the events of the story.
• Identify the problems that come up in the story, beginning Henry and Richard’s with being the only people in the world who didn’t get to go away for spring break.  Then identify the solutions that come up in the course of the story to meet each problem. Do this as a group, using a Pocket Chart, or have students create individual charts on paper.
• Use Post-It notes. Josepha’s sharing her approach in this video. Your students can do the same on their desks or together on a section of your white board.

Henry and Richard have different eating habits. Also, the plot of the tale centers on a special substance, “the dessert element,” which makes desserts taste good, and on the response of Graxians to celery. Bring nutrition into the study by focusing on these aspects of the story.

• Use a Venn Diagram to compare the two boys’ preferences. Add the preferences of the Thrells and the Graxians.
• List all the foods in the book, for skimming and scanning practice. Discuss different ways to divide them. The book roughly divides foods into healthy foods and desserts. Are there other ways to sort the foods? Could there be healthy desserts that would belong on both lists?
• Find nutritional information for some of the foods in the book, either online or on nutrition labels on packaged foods. Decide how to determine whether a food is healthy or not.
• The “dessert element,” also known as XTC-1000, makes desserts taste good. Without it, desserts don’t taste good at all. Consider the hypothesis that XTC-1000 might be sugar. Look at the evidence in favor of this (give students a taste of unsweetened chocolate, for example) and also the evidence against the hypothesis (such as the fact that it is released into the air) and decide whether or not to accept the hypothesis.
• Find the results of having too much XTC-1000 (chapter 2). In the same chapter, Aric the alien says that “life without dessert is a terrible thing.” Challenge students to write about this claim, expressing their opinion and supporting it with examples.

Some of the alien beings in the story are monsters, so you can bring monstrous stuff into the classroom for fun. Use Carson- Dellosa’s Reading Monsters Bulletin Board set, stickers, deskplates, or notepads like the ones we’ve used below to create a person word wall.

However, Aric isn’t a monster, but a small pink humanoid. The inhabitants of the planet Threll aren’t described at all. Have students write about their own ideas of what space aliens might look like.

Your fourth grade classes might enjoy Discovery’s speculations about alien life forms. Have students practice their note-taking skills, and then compare what they learn with the experiences of Henry and Richard in the book.

“Richard…and Henry were sitting on the floor of a giant white room. One whole wall was made up of dials and screens.” This is the description of the control room of the spacecraft, and it leaves plenty of room for speculation. Have students create their own illustrations or plans for the control room. Here are some resources:

• Lots of control room images, fictional and actual
• Sketchup is a good choice for this project. Nothing wrong with pencil and paper, either.

Younger students will enjoy the adventurous story. Encourage imaginative play in Henry and Richard’s world. We love Playmobil for the classroom as well as for home — it’s sturdy, you can disinfect it, and it’s designed to encourage imaginative play. Add the Playmobil Alien Space Prison Pod to your dramatic play area to go with this book, or set it up in your Sand Table.

Finally, challenge students to write their own space travel stories. Get further ideas in Science Fiction Genre Studies.