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The Kissing Hand Activities and Lesson Plans for 2024

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Kissing Hand 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 perseverance and compassion, this The Kissing Hand picture book by Audrey Penn 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 Kissing Hand Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

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

THE KISSING HAND SUMMARY

Chester the raccoon does not want to go to school. He wants to stay at home and be with his mother, play with his friends, play with toys, read his books, and swing on his swing. Mrs. Raccoon tells Chester that sometimes we have to do things that we don’t want to do and can be scary, but that he will love school once he starts. 

Chester’s mother teaches him about the kissing hand. She kisses the palm of his hand and says that whenever he feels lonely at school he can hold his palm to his cheek and think ‘Mommy loves you.’ This makes Chester feel a lot better and know that his mother’s love will always be with him. 

When it is time to go to school, Chester is ready. He gives his mother her own kissing hand and dances away to school. 

THE KISSING HAND 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 The Kissing Hand, 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 Kissing Hand reading comprehension questions focus on: 

  • summarize / retell
  • analyzing character
  • making connections
  • plot | problem – solution
  • ask and answer questions
  • author’s purpose

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

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

  • perseverance
  • compassion

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • plural nouns
  • suffixes
  • prepositions
  • apostrophes

THE KISSING HAND 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
The Kissing Hand book companion
elementary teacher reading aloud a picture book to her students

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The Kissing Hand activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for The Kissing Hand?

  • Lexile® Measure: 540
  • Guided Reading Level: N
  • DRA Level: 28
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.9 – 3

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Audrey Penn. It was illustrated by Ruth Harper.

What genre is The Kissing Hand?

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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