A lesson on Diversity (The Crayon Box that Talked)

My third graders are finishing up their "crayon lessons".  We started with The Day the Crayons Quit and then did a lesson on Making Friends is an Art! and we are now using The Crayon Box that Talked to talk about cooperation, teamwork, diversity, getting along and acceptance.    There are many different options for using The Crayon Box that Talked.  You can purchase The Crayon Box that Talked from Amazon, you can view the YouTube video of the story HERE, a Vimeo version here or you can print a copy of the poem version HERE.

Lesson:  I started my unit on cooperation by reading The Crayon Box that Talked.  We then had a group discussion on working as a team and being unique.  We talked about the feelings of the crayons in our first story, The Day the Crayons Quit and we also talked about Brown from Making Friends is an Art and students had a really great discussion on what it would be like if we removed brown from our boxes of crayons, markers or colored pencils for the remainder of the school year.  The main idea of our conversation being that all students are unique and have something special to contribute to the class.  I then gave each student a piece of paper and told them that they were to draw the most beautiful picture that they could...using only ONE crayon.  We ended up with pictures like this:

Once everyone had completed their pictures we had another discussion.  Students talked about the challenges they faced trying to make something beautiful with only one crayon. Students eventually came up with the thought that school wouldn't be as fun if they didn't have classmates with their own unique qualities.  

The next step was to create a class picture.  I used puzzle pieces that I found free on TPT.  You can find those HERE. Each student received a puzzle piece and they were instructed to write their name in the middle of their piece and to decorate it using all of the colors.  Finally, I took all of the pieces and put them together to make a class picture with the heading "We all Fit Together".  I haven't had time to hang the completed puzzle yet but I found some examples on some other blogs:
Playing in Prep shared this classroom puzzle:


I found this one on Miss Beadles Class Blog:

More Connections:

The Crayon Box that Talked (free)

The Crayon Box That Talked Writing Papers (free)

The Crayon Box That Talked Writing Activity (free)

The Crayon Box that Talked Activity for Back to School (free)

We All Fit Together: Diversity Sign for Display (free)

The Crayon Box that Talked ($1.00)

Related Lesson:
Making Friends is an Art! (making and keeping friends)
The Day the Crayon's Quit (Empathy)

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