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Little Tree Activities and Lesson Plans for 2025

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Little Tree 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 a theme of transitions, this Little Tree picture book by Loren Long 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 Little Tree Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of Little Tree. 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 Little Tree reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

LITTLE TREE SUMMARY

Little Tree lives in a forest surrounded by other trees. He enjoys hearing the morning dove sing and the squirrels climbing his branches. When fall comes, the trees’ leaves start to change color. Eventually, the other trees begin to drop their leaves. Little Tree holds onto his leaves tight, he is nervous about what will happen when he drops his leaves. Little Tree keeps his leaves through the winter. When spring comes, the other trees start to grow new leaves, while Little Tree keeps his old, brown leaves. 

The seasons continue to change and Little Tree keeps his original leaves. The other trees have grown big and strong. The squirrels and morning dove sit in their branches. Little Tree is still very small and can no longer feel the sunlight. He remembers how he used to be the same as the other trees. When he finally begins to let go of his leaves, Little Tree is able to grow and change like the others.  

LITTLE TREE 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 Little Tree, 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 Little Tree reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • making inferences
  • making predictions
  • visualizing
  • plot | problem and solution
  • cause and effect
  • identifying theme, message or moral

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

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

  • transitions

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • verb tense
  • plural nouns
  • antonyms
  • types of sentences

LITTLE TREE 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
Little Tree book cover
two elementary students listening to an interactive read aloud

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Little Tree activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for Little Tree?

  • Lexile® Measure: 580L
  • Guided Reading Level: L
  • DRA Level: 20
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.5

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written and illustrated by Loren Long.

What genre is Little Tree?

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 40 pages long.

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