Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree will love this post. It includes resource recommendations, teaching ideas, and information about the book. You will have what you need to create an engaging interactive read aloud lesson.
With themes of manners and goal setting, this When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree picture book by Jamie L.B. Deenihan is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love it too!
Engage Your Students with When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree.
- 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 When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
WHEN GRANDMA GIVES YOU A LEMON TREE SUMMARY
The narrator of this book is a young girl whose birthday is coming up. She has a list of things she hopes to receive for her birthday: a robot dog, drone, computer, phone, remote control car, headphones. However, when she gets a gift from her grandmother, it is not what she expected. Instead, her grandma gifts her a lemon tree.
The girl is polite and makes sure to act excited, smile and say thank you. She starts taking care of the lemon tree by making sure it is in a sunny spot and doesn’t overwater it. When winter comes, she takes the lemon tree inside to keep it warm. Finally, in the spring it is time to pick the lemons.
She brings the lemons inside, slices and squeezes them. She has lemon juice! Next, she uses the lemon juice to make lemonade and sets up a lemonade stand. Once she has sold the lemonade, she takes her money to the store. The girl says it is time to buy what she really wants. Readers are surprised to learn the girl buys gardening supplies! She plans a garden full of plants and flowers!
This book is a sweet story about making the best out of an unexpected situation and working hard to earn the things you enjoy.
WHEN GRANDMA GIVES YOU A LEMON 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 When Grandma Gives You a Lemon 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 When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making predictions
- point of view
- making connections
- sequencing
- identifying theme | message | moral
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- manners
- goal setting
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- action verbs
- types of sentences
- adverbs
- punctuation
WHEN GRANDMA GIVES YOU A LEMON 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
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree?
- Lexile® Measure: 490L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 24
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.7
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Jamie L.B. Deenihan. It was illustrated by Lorraine Rocha.
What genre is When Grandma Gives You a Lemon 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 32 pages long.
