For many elementary teachers, fall is one of the most fun seasons because of the variety of topics available for engaging lesson plans. Starting with Back to School activities all the way through Thanksgiving there are so many fun things to create lesson plans around.
One of our favorite topics? Halloween! Halloween provides an abundance of fun for teachers and students alike. From lessons on pumpkins to inquiry-based activities about the history of Halloween there are plenty of activities to explore throughout the month.
While there are so many wonderful October lessons to choose from, today we will share with you an all-time favorite – our Creepy Carrot Lesson Plan for the book by Aaron Reynold.
Creepy Carrots! Summary
If Creepy Carrots! is a new book in your teaching library, here is a quick summary to help you get more familiar with it. Already a fan of Creepy Carrots? Read ahead to begin learning all about the read aloud activities we have available for this book.
Creepy Carrots! follows a young rabbit named Jasper who loves eating carrots from Crackenhopper Field. However, when he notices that the carrots may be following him home his love of eating carrots is challenged.
Jasper becomes convinced that the carrots are out to get him, which creates a bit of a creepy situation. However, this creepy situation leads to many humorous and suspenseful situations as Jasper tries to avoid the carrots.
The engaging narrative written by Aaron Reynolds, combined with delightful illustrations by Peter Brown, makes this a wonderfully fun and slightly spooky read for young kids. Moreover, the way this story playfully explores themes of imagination and facing one’s fears in a lighthearted and entertaining way makes it an excellent story to explore with read aloud activities.
Creepy Carrots Questions
One thing that makes this book a great choice for a read aloud in first and second grades is the range of literacy activities it allows for. Beginning with text dependent comprehension questions.
To support you in teaching this book we have created all the comprehension questions you need to support your students reading comprehension. Below are examples of some of the text dependent questions included for use in this read aloud:
- What challenge does Jasper face? What about the carrots?
- Was Jasper imagining things? Why or why not?
- Why does the author repeat the words, creepy carrots many times throughout the story?
- What was Jasper’s plan? How do you know?
- Why did the illustrator choose the colors black, white and orange for this book?
While comprehension questions are at the core of any read aloud they are not the only types of activities that make a read aloud effective. Keep reading to explore other types of activities that we have included in this Creepy Carrots! Read Aloud.
Creepy Carrots Activities
As a teacher you know that literacy is not only about reading, it is also about writing. Therefore, we have included a writing page as one of the activities in this read aloud.
This writing activity helps students connect with the book on a personal level by responding to the prompt, “What Creeps Me Out…”. Not only does this prompt help students connect with the text but it also allows them to explore literacy from their own point of view.
Speaking of point of view, one of the other activities in this read aloud invites students to explore point of view in the book. They will look at Jasper’s point of view in contrast to the point of view of the carrots.
Along with responding through writing and exploring points of view, we created activities for story mapping, sequencing, and vocabulary. We even provide you with a quiz to assess students’ overall understanding of the book!
Creepy Carrots STEM Activity
Beyond the core standards explored through reading and writing, there are many creative ways to further assess student comprehension. Therefore, we include a craft with each of our read alouds.
However, our Creepy Carrots Craft activity goes one step further and involves STEM exploration. With this STEM activity for Creepy Carrots! students go beyond the text to explore how they could solve the problem in the book by helping Jasper build a structure to keep the carrots in the garden.
While this is a fictional problem, it provides students with a hands on experience that reflects how they may solve a similar problem in the real world. Therefore, providing them with the key elements of a STEM project.
If you are new to exploring STEM with your students, this is the perfect project to start with. In addition to the detailed lesson plan provided for the more traditional read aloud activities, we have provided you with a detailed lesson plan to implement this STEM project.
To give you an idea of how you will teach students STEM using this book take a peek at our STEM Engineering Design Process outlined below.
- Ask
- Imagine
- Plan
- Create & Test
- Improve
More Aaron Reynolds Read Alouds
If you love Creepy Carrots then you will love the other creepy tales by Aaron Reynolds: Creepy Pair of Underwear and Creepy Crayon.
These two books continue to follow young Jasper as he encounters more creepy things in his life. In Creepy Pair of Underwear, Jasper can’t wait to get a pair of glow-in-the-dark underwear. However, he is soon creeped out by how much they glow green and make it difficult for him to sleep.
In Creepy Crayon, you guessed it, Jasper’s paranoia creeps up once again when he finds a purple crayon on the way home from school. While he thinks this crayon will help him get better grades in school, it ends up being a bit too creepy to help him out in the long run.
Just like Creepy Carrots, these two books are wonderful for teaching literacy. Which is why we created read alouds for both!
All three of these read alouds are designed to be taught over the course of 3-5 days. Therefore, if you choose to teach all three books you have almost an entire month’s worth of reading lessons ready to go. To make it easy (and inexpensive) for you, we have even bundled these three read alouds together.
If you want to cover the full month of October, you can easily pair these three books with one of our other Halloween themed read alouds. This will give you a ready to teach read aloud for every week of the month!
Whether you choose to bundle all three of these Aaron Reynolds Creepy books together, pair them with other October books, or another one of your favorites, we hope you and your students have a wonderful (and slightly spooky) month of reading!
