Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Tomten 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 kindness, this The Tomten picture book by Astrid Lindgren 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 Tomten Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Tomten. 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 Tomten reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE TOMTEN SUMMARY
The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren tells the Scandinavian story of a gnome. In this book, the Tomten lives on an old farm and visits the people and animals during the night. While humans have never seen him, they know he is there because of his little footprints in the snow. It takes place during the long, frigid winter while everyone is wishing for spring. As the Tomten visits the cows, sheep, dogs, and children, he offers words of hope and reminds them to be grateful. He speaks his own, silent language that the animals can understand.
Students will enjoy listening to this sweet folktale from another country.
THE TOMTEN 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 Tomten, 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 Tomten reading comprehension questions focus on:
- comparing and contrasting
- analyzing character
- analyzing setting
- summarize/retell
- sequencing
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- kindness
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- plural nouns
- compound words
- adjectives
- prepositions
THE TOMTEN 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


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BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for The Tomten?
- Lexile® Measure: 675
- Guided Reading Level: P
- DRA Level: 38
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.9
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Astrid Lindgren.
What genre is The Tomten?
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.