The Day Our Crayons Quit

1. Read The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt to students as a group. Discuss in large or small groups the letters presented by the crayons. Sample questions could include: Who had the strongest points? How did the crayons convey their feelings? Which color did you relate to the most?
2. Allow students to choose a color not presented in the book (Crayola has many fabulous colors to choose from!) Discuss/provide students with proper writing format for letters. Have students create a rough draft of a letter to themselves from the crayon of their choice.
3. In teams, have students peer review their letters for structure, format, vocabulary, spelling, etc.
4. Provide students with a variety of stationery, graph paper, lined paper, etc. for their good copies to be written with the crayon color they chose.
5. Have students visually illustrate the points made in the letter using Crayola® Colored Pencils. Their final art product should be a combination of a letter by the crayon and a picture using many colored pencils but a clear emphasis of the color which they initially chose.

LA: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.

LA: Analyze how visual elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text.

LA: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of their experiences and ideas.

VA: Integrate visual, special, and temporal concepts with content to communicate intended meaning in their artworks.

VA: Employ organizational structures and analyze what makes them effective or not effective in the communication of ideas.

For Write a Letter of Appreciation Week turn the tables on DeWalt’s format and have students write letters as the 12 colors showing their appreciation of how Duncan uses them.

Read other books with a similar vein such as Elemenopee by Pamela Hall (disgruntled letters of the alphabet) and create correspondence from the letters of the alphabet, or numbers, or shapes.

Research known artists that work monochromatically (Pablo Picasso, Jasper Johns, Milton Resnick, Louise Nevelson). Create an art piece inspired by their work, and/or write a piece of correspondence as an art critique from the point of view of another color.

For Social Studies and Ethics, have students choose one of the letters from DeWalt’s book that reminds them of a time they felt “less than” and write a response on that experience (how it was similar, how they felt, how they resolved the situation, etc.).