The Veldt

The Veldt

Pre-reading Activities

You will make predictions about the story in this activity. There are no right or wrong answers. Use your imagination and don't be afraid to make your predictions.

Poll

What category did you place Lydia, Wendy, Peter and George in?

• Setting

• Character

• Problem

Poll

What category did you place Happy Life Homes, the veldt-land, nursery and Iowa in?

• Problem

• Characters

• Setting

Poll

What category did you place vacation, odorophonics, psychologist, lion and technology in?

• Setting

• Characters

• Problem

Open Ended

Based off the words in the word bank, make a prediction about what you think the story is about, and what might happen. Answer in 2-3 sentences.

Poll

Out of all the words in the word bank, which words are unknown to you?

• the veldt-land

• psychologist

• Odorophonics

• nursery

• technology

Open Ended

Write a question you have about the story based on the words from the word bank. After we read the story, we will come back to these questions and try to answer them.

Vocabulary

Use context clues to help you define the bold unknown words.

Multiple Choice

Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in the middle of the baked veldt-land. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the hot air.

What does odorophonics mean? Use the context clues in the story to answer.

• a device that transports people to different locations.

• a device to test your sense of smell.

• a device that can produce real smells

• a device that creates optical illusions.

Open Ended

"That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot.

What does the word nursemaid mean?

Multiple Choice

Remarkable how the nursery caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every desire. The children thought lions and there were lions.

What do the words telepathic emanations mean?

• sympathetic situations

• children's thoughts

• angry ideas from children

• ideas that can discourage people

Multiple Choice

"I don't know anything", he said, "except that I'm beginning to be sorry that we bought that room for the children. If children are neurotic at all, a room like that----"

What does the word neurotic mean?

• having a hard time

• having a feeling of being homesick

• having trouble telling what is real or not real

• having a nerve disease

Open Ended

"Who was it said, 'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally?' We've never lifted a hand. They're insufferable--let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they treat us as if we were offspring."

What does the word insufferable mean?

Multiple Choice

"On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety--oh, Sweden perhaps, or Denmark or China---"

What does the word intersperse mean?

• remaining the same

• being too stubborn to change

• adding variety

• being well-traveled

Open Ended

"Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?"

"Can't say that I did; the usual violence's, a tendency toward paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing."

What does the word paranoia mean?

Open Ended

At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic carnival across town and had televised home to say they'd be late, to go ahead eating.

What does televised mean?

Open Ended

Based upon the vocabulary words and what you have learned from the context clues taken from the story, make a prediction about what you think will happen in the short story "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury