the day the crayons quit

the day the crayons quit by drew daywalt is one of my recent favorite children's book.

the book is taken from the crayons' perspective and is quite clever and cute.

the book is about a young boy named duncan, who goes to school one day expecting to use his crayons.  what he finds inside his crayon box is a bunch of letters from the crayons.

one by one duncan reads the letters from his crayons only to find out that they have all quit.

the crayons no longer want to work or color for duncan.  in each letter they all explain the various reasons why they don't want to work anymore.

"hey duncan, it's me, red crayon.  we need to talk.  

you make me work harder than any of your other

crayons.  all year long i wear myself out coloring

fire engines, apples, strawberries, and everything

else that's red.  i even work on holidays........."

"dear duncan, it has been great being your favorite

color this past year.  and the year before.  and the

year before that! i have really enjoyed all those

oceans, lakes, rivers, raindrops, rain clouds,and

clear skies.  but the bad news is......."

"duncan, okay listen here, kid! you have not used

me once in the past year.  it's because you think i

am a girls' color, isn't it? speaking of which, please

tell your little sister i said thank you for using me

to color in her 'little princess' coloring book.........."

in the end, duncan comes up with a clever plan to get his crayons to start coloring again.

and gets an a+ from his teacher for his creativity.

seriously, you have to get this book...your kids will love it.

i read this to a group of first grade students a few months ago 

and did a few activities with them as well.

the students loved the book.  i wanted to work on reading comprehension.

so one of the activities that i chose to do with the students was print out little bits of each crayon's letter and tape them to a craft stick.

i purposely did not color the crayons to make the game more fun.

i read the cards out loud to the students and had them guess which crayon wrote the letter.

i found this activity and many other fun ones on teachers pay teachers.

to help the students make a personal connection to the story, i had them each write down

what their favorite crayon color was and how they used it the most.

some of their answers were:

"red for harts"

"pink for artwork"

"blue for the sky"

i also had them get out their crayon boxes and draw a picture

using all the crayons in their boxes.

(i chose to do this activity because in the end duncan uses all of his crayons in a fun, creative way).

here some of the results.....

it was fun watching the kids try to be creative and use all the crayons in their crayon boxes.

a perfect way for the students to connect to the story.