Storybooks · Grades 1 and 2

The Runaway Egg

At the back of the museum, behind the biggest skeleton, there is an old wooden door.

  • For Grades 1 and 2
  • 3 endings

Ways to do it

  • On their own, with their Pet
  • With a grown-up beside them
  • With someone far away, on a call

Also in العربية

For grown-ups

Through an old museum door to a hill of dinosaur nests, where your child helps a runaway egg get home.

What your child practises

  • Counting to 16, and one more and one less
  • How Maiasaura nested together and looked after their young
  • Reading clues: speckles on an egg, a gap in a nest
  • Keeping calm and still beside a big animal

Listen for

Your child saying the egg needed its own mother, or that we leave a real egg where we find it.

Your part

  • Ask the tip on each page, and wait for an answer
  • Count the eggs together when the book asks

Take it off the screen

Fill an egg box with 12 small things. How many more make 16?

Where the facts come from

After the book

The Fossil Door

Book 1 in this series

How it begins

At the back of the museum, behind the biggest skeleton, there is an old wooden door. A brass dial sits in the middle of it, like a clock with no hands. Dr. Okafor turns a big brass key. Clunk. "Would you like to see where the bones came from, your child's name?" she asks.

Click, click, click. Dr. Okafor turns the dial. "Three rules," she says. "Come back when the bell rings three times. Bring me one true thing. And never pick up an egg." Their Pet rushes past your child's name to the door. "Jurassic!" The dial stops. Cretaceous. "Nearly," smiles Dr. Okafor.

Your child's name steps through the door into warm sunshine. Seventy-seven million years ago, this place was a wide green valley. The air is warm and sticky. Somewhere, something honks like a big trumpet. "Remember the bell," calls Dr. Okafor from the museum.

A muddy path winds down the valley. In the mud there are footprints, each one bigger than a dinner plate, with three fat toes. "Something big walked here," says your child's name. Their Pet hops from one footprint to the next.

The hill is covered in nests, each as wide as a paddling pool. Big dinosaurs stand between them, humming softly. Then, wobble, wobble, roll! A speckled egg tumbles down the slope. It stops right by your child's name's boots. Whose egg is it?

Your child chooses what happens next

  • Stay with the egg
  • Look for its nest

Activities for the same grades

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