This story time was a part of a monthly story time play group I organized for kids ages 2-4 years old. You can read more about how I did those and see the other themes we followed here: Story Time Play Groups
The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt is one of my all time favorite picture books, so naturally I had to plan a story time based around it! It’s about a little boy named Duncan who gets a stack of letters from his crayons and they’ve all got something to complain about. Red crayon is feeling overworked since he works all year long and even has to work on holidays coloring Santas and hearts. Black is tired of being used only for outlining things. Orange and yellow are arguing over the true color of the sun… and much more!
I think part of the reason I love this book so much is that as a kid I would play with my crayons/markers/colored pencils like they were people and would give them personalities, stories, and relationships. So reading a book like this made me feel a big connection to my childhood self.
We did this story time in September as part of back to school season, but it could be done any time of year!
Each kid that was coming chose one of the colors of crayons to be ahead of time and came dressed in that color with a crayon headband. I just cut a simple one out of construction paper.
As I read the book the kid whose color was being read got to come up and stand by me to be featured. They could act their part out a little bit if they wanted to as well.
Even the babies got to have a turn!
Just the one book was enough for our group of younger kids, but if you wanted to expand it a little bit the sequel The Day the Crayons Came Home is also a lot of fun! When I love a book so much there is always the worry that a sequel will be a letdown, but when this one came out I loved it and thought it was the perfect follow up!
After reading the book we did a craft where the kids could make their own crayon people. Here are a couple other crayon craft ideas as well.
Afterwards we had lunch together. Every kid had brought food in their crayon’s color to contribute to the meal.
This is still one of my favorite story time activities I’ve done and it was really fun to see the kids get into it! I have repeated a similar version of it with different kids and it was a hit again!
There are also a couple board books that feature the same characters available as well as crayon finger puppets. Click the picture to see them on Amazon:
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