The Day the Crayons Came Home activities and lesson plan ideas

Our The Day the Crayons Came Home Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Drew Daywalt's book. Read aloud the picture book then use the printables or go paperless with Google or Seesaw to practice standards-based skills.

THIS READING UNIT FOCUSES ON USING THE MENTOR TEXT TO TEACH: 

◼️ READING STRATEGIES

☐ making predictions

☐ summarize / retell

☐ analyzing character

☐ plot | problem - solution

☐ making connections

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ making good choices

☐ feelings

☐ taking ownership

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ plural nouns

☐ compound words

☐ contractions

☐ homophones

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The book, The Day the Crayons Came Home, by Drew Daywalt will have students laughing! It tells the story of a boy named Duncan and his missing crayons. One day, Duncan received a stack of postcards and discovered each was from one of his crayons!

The crayons have left the box for different reasons: maroon was lost in the couch, pea green wanted to see the world, and neon red was left at a hotel. Despite being gone for a while, the crayons are all ready to come home for various reasons. When Duncan does collect all the crayons, he finds they no longer fit in the box! To make them feel at home, he makes them their own crayon fort!

This adorable story will have students laughing as the crayons share their challenges faced outside the box.

THIS COLLECTION OF ACTIVITIES and LESSON IDEAS INCLUDES:

➜ Comprehension Questions categorized by reading strategy; text-dependent
➜ Social-Emotional Learning guidance lesson ideas & discussion topics based on the story
➜ Vocabulary Activities with kid-friendly definitions
➜ Grammar Topics selected to align with the text
➜ Focus Sentences use the book & author's craft as a mentor text to improve writing
➜ Lesson Planner summary, background info and planning space

➜ Story Mapping Printable identify character, setting, problem and solution

➜ Making Words Activity Page use any word from the book

➜ Focus Sentence copy work, identifying elements of the sentence, rewriting)

➜ Design a New Book Cover demonstrate understanding of the text by creating an illustration

➜ Predicting Activity primary-ruled and wider-ruled versions
➜ Summarizing Somebody → Wanted → But → Then → Finally

➜ Comparing and Contrasting using a Venn Diagram

➜ Cause and Effect analyze how events affect one another

➜ Visualization illustrate visualizations from the story and support thinking with text-based evidence

➜ Making Connections identify text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections

➜ Thematic Writing Paper Use with the Writing Prompts... Makes a Great Bulletin Board

➜ 2 Sequencing Activities First → Next → Then → Last and Beginning → Middle → End

➜ 2 Vocabulary Activities Vocabulary Booklet and Word Mapping

➜ 2 Character Trait Activities listing traits and supporting traits with text-based evidence
➜ 30 Text-Based Writing Prompts 3 prompts for each of the following types of writing:

• narrative
• persuasive / opinion
• descriptive
• expository / informative
• creative / story writing
• procedure / how-to
• list-making
• letter / postcard writing
• poem
• book reviews

INCLUDED DIGITAL ACTIVITIES:

➜ 5 Teaching Slides to use for instruction (add questions, vocabulary, instructions, etc)

➜ 15 Student Pages for use in Google™️ Classroom or as editable files to create customized printables