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Hair Love Activities and Lesson Plans for 2025

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Hair Love will find this post helpful. It includes resource recommendations, free teaching ideas, and information about the book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging interactive read aloud lessons based on this story.

With themes of patience and empathy, this Hair Love picture book by Matthew A. Cherry is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too! Learn more about this book below!

Engage Your Students with Hair Love Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of Hair Love. You can find it in the section below.
  2. Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
  3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with Hair Love reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

HAIR LOVE SUMMARY

Zuri loves her hair! She loves the way it makes her feel. She feels likes a princess when it is in braids, and a superhero when it is in puffs. There is nothing her hair can’t do!

One day, Zuri needs an extra special hairstyle. She sets off to create the perfect look. Her dad volunteers to help, and he creates many different hairstyles for her. Through trial and error and hard work, they eventually create the perfect one! Zuri is ready for her special day.

Students will love this story about a girl who loves her hair. They will start to think about the things they love about themselves, and what makes them special.

HAIR LOVE LESSON PLAN IDEAS

Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.

When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for Hair Love, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.

We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.

READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

The text-based Hair Love reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • summarizing and retelling
  • analyzing character
  • point of view
  • making connections
  • author’s purpose

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

  • patience
  • empathy

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • commas
  • types of sentences
  • compound words

HAIR LOVE ACTIVITIES

You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:

  • comprehension questions
  • 30 writing prompts with themed paper
  • vocabulary activities
  • word study print & go activities
  • ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
  • social emotional learning discussion topics
  • graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
Hair Love book companion
elementary students pointing at the pictures of a book being read aloud

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Hair Love book and activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for Hair Love?

  • Lexile® Measure: AD480L
  • Guided Reading Level: M-N
  • DRA Level: 20-24
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.6-2.7

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Matthew A. Cherry. It was illustrated by Vashti Harrison.

What genre is Hair Love?

It is a fiction book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.

How many pages are in the book?

The story is 32 pages long.

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