Ezra Jack Keats Author Study

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This Ezra Jack Keats author study is full of hands-on activities kids in grades K-2 will enjoy! The free thirty-page printable brings the books to life.

One of our all time favorite winter stories for kids is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. After discovering that Ezra Jack Keats authored many children’s stories, I chose to create a fun author study featuring five of his books.

You can spread this study across an entire month choosing one book per week. Or, you can do it for one week choosing one new story each day.

Either way, kids in grades K-2 will love diving into these fun books with hands-on activities and fun printables!

Ezra Jack Keats Author Study

This author study features five of my favorite books from Ezra Jack Keats. I have gathered hands-on activities, videos, and crafts to go with each book. In addition, I’ve created fun printable learning activities that tie into each one.

Feel free to pick and choose the activities and printables that best fit your students. The important part is to develop a love of learning that stems from diving into a great book!

The Snowy Day Activities

The Snowy Day: The adventures of a little boy in the city on a very snowy day.

Hands-on Activities:

• Make snowball cookies for snack time.

• Make your own sparkly snow foam.

• Have an indoor snowball fight. (You can also just use jumbo marshmallows.)

• Use coffee filters to make snowflakes.

• Make snow slime.

Printables Include:

• Handwriting practice

• Rhyming word match

• What Should I Wear? sorting activity

• What else starts with “S”

Whistle for Willie Activities

Whistle for Willie: For Peter, learning to whistle means being able to call his dog Willie, and being a bit closer to those two magic words; grown up.

Hands-on Activities:

• Help your little ones make a whistle out of a straw.

• Watch a video retelling the story of Whistle for Willie:

Printables Included:

• Write about something you are good at.

• Long and short “i” sort

• Discuss the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Regards to the Man in the Moon Activities

Regards to the Man in the Moon: When the other kids make fun of Louie and call his father “the junkman,” his dad explains that the so-called junk he loves “can take you right out of this world” with a little imagination. So Louie builds the spaceship Imagination I and blasts off into his own space odyssey.

Hands-on Activities:

• Little ones can make their own rockets with straws.

• Or, try your hand at this fun quilled paper rocket with a free printable template!

Printables Included:

• Practice writing the names of the planets.

• Sight word hunt

• Vocabulary recording sheet

• Write about the moon.

Pet Show Activities

Pet Show: How can you enter a pet show when your pet runs away? That’s the question Archie faces when he can’t find his cat to enter in the neighborhood pet show. Fortunately, he does some fast thinking to win a prize in this beloved classic from award-winning author-illustrator Ezra Jack Keats.

Hands-on Activities:

• Dog hand puppets

• Collage Cats

• Make a paper pet collar.

• Paper bag puppy puppet

• Print out this fun My Pets printable!

Printables Include:

• Writing and ordering the days of the week

• Beginning sounds

• Design a pet and award.

• ABC order

The Trip Activities

The Trip: One of Keats’s best-loved characters, Louie, stars in this poignant story about the loneliness of moving to a new place. Homesick for his old neighborhood, Louie finds a way to return—by making a shoe box model of where he used to live, and pretending he is inside it. But soon, Louie will discover that he doesn’t need to use his imagination to find friends; in fact, they may be as close as his new front door.

Hands-on Activities:

• Make a toilet paper roll airplane.

• Here’s a fun footprint airplane craft.

• Explore these fun DIY Halloween costumes for kids.

Printables Include:

• Write a new ending for the story.

• Write about feelings.

• Airplane color and write page

• Draw your Halloween costume.

• Write and draw about the view from Louie’s airplane.

Download Your Printables

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