Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Animals’ Santa 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 anger management, this The Animals’ Santa picture book by Jan Brett 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 The Animals’ Santa Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Animals’ Santa. You can find it in the section below.
- 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.
- Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Animals’ Santa reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE ANIMALS' SANTA SUMMARY
It is Christmas Eve and all the forest animals are talking about the animals’ Santa. However, Little Snow does not believe he is real because no one has ever seen him. Despite his brother trying to convince him, Little Snow gets mad and breaks the ice. That night, Big Snowshoe thinks about the broken ice and decides to make a chime. When everyone is sleeping, the chime sounds and the animals come out of their homes. All of a sudden, clover lands at the rabbits’ feet and each animal gets a present! The animals wonder if it could be the animals’ Santa. When a snowy owl flies through the sky and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas, Little Snow truly believes!
THE ANIMALS’ SANTA LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Each of our 600+ 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 The Animals’ Santa, 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 The Animals’ Santa reading comprehension questions focus on:
- point of view
- plot (problem-solution)
- ask and answer questions
- sequencing
- cause and effect
- making predictions
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- anger management
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- action verbs
- types of sentences
- quotation marks
- apostrophe
THE ANIMALS’ SANTA 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
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for The Animals’ Santa?
- Lexile® Measure: AD630L
- Guided Reading Level: L
- DRA Level: 20
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.2
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Jan Brett.
What genre is The Animals’ Santa?
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.
