Elizabeth Johnson Are you looking for a cross-curricular lesson that can bring literacy into the art room? Or Art into the general classroom? I was inspired to create The Day the Crayons Quit activities after I happened upon this book during a trip to the Public Library.
This book was an absolute gem to find and couldn’t more blatantly bring literacy into the forefront with a strong inspirational base in visual art. Read on for a The Day the Crayons Quit art lesson, how to incorporate literacy into the lesson, and a Free Printable.
The Day the Crayons Quit Book
If you are like me, and one of the few people who don’t know about this book, here is the premise. One day Duncan’s Crayons decide to write him letters in protest. Some of the letters are complaints, some are encouragements, but all of them are funny.
The crayons write to Duncan in a way that gets the students excited to find out what the next anxious crayon has to say.
I read this book to my toddler before I created the lesson for my daughter to try out and she kept trying to spy at the book (though it was quiet reading time for her). You can literally see the magnetism of this book.
Needed Materials
The Day the Crayons Quit
9”x12” white drawing paper
Crayons
The Day the Crayons Quit Lesson Motivation
Using motivational material is really up to your style as a teacher, and whether you are doing this lesson in an art room and adding in literacy vs. in the core classroom and incorporating the arts.
You could simply read the book at “circle” or project it onto the smartboard. But to add excitement I will include a few videos you can show for your The Day the Crayons Quit activities motivational materials.
This first one is a The Day the Crayons Quit activities book trailer. You can show this, have a discussion, and still read it in your gathering space.
Some of The Day the Crayons Quit activities questions may be: Why do you think the crayons are quitting? What is causing them to quit?
If you are an art teacher and will be demonstrating this lesson for several classes you may want to use a read allowed video. Here are my two favorites I found on Youtube. If you don’t care for these there are more you can find.
If you are worried that your students may not understand what is going on due to the accents he uses in this read allowed I have included an alternate. This one is much clearer, but I dare say less entertaining.
The Day the Crayons Quit Free Printable
After asking prediction questions and watching the motivational materials I used this The Day the Crayons Quit activities Free Printable.
The PDF lays out the “rules” for the assignment. These rules will give your student some guidelines to create by but are presented in a fun vs. restrictive way. For example, using good craftsmanship and filling in their entire paper.
These are guidelines an art teacher would likely expect of her students anyway. But instead of the child feeling restrained by these rules it becomes a fun challenge.
Speaking of challenge, I often like to finish the year with “challenges.” This makes the last couple of weeks fun for the students and allows me to restrict the materials I need to have out.
But no good teacher would start closing up their room early…right? And since you don’t know me let me insert I’m kidding. Do what you need to do.
I will also use a similar form of a story motivation followed by a drawing for the first week of school. This will give me a baseline to see where my students are at skill-wise.
ArtsyFartzy-Blog-The-Day-the-Crayons-Quit-Activities Free PDF
The Day the Crayons Quit Activities
At the end of your The Day the Crayons Quit activities your students will have a highly creative piece of art. I was happy with what my little student created. These pictures were taken with my daughter the summer after her kindergarten year.
Not bad for a six year old.
Now, your students can use this artwork to take ideas from to create their own writing. Have your students write back to their crayons explaining what they did to address each of their concerns.
To find out how to use art as a writing prompt check out this post on Teaching Literacy Through Art.
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