If you’ve not read Harold and the Purple Crayon with your kids, you absolutely must.

Just last year, I embarked on a quest to buy – and read (of course!) – every single book found in this list called ’50 Books Every Parent Should Read to their Child’. Believe you me, I (crazily) ordered every single title found in this list from Amazon, and have been clocking in bedtime story hours ever since with these lovely children stories.

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson is one of them, and one of our favourites.

I managed to find some creative lesson ideas from this website for the book, and conducted 3 different activities for Ben, Becks and Nat for one of our homelearning lessons with the book.

Ben (5 years old, going 6)

For Ben, I downloaded the Harold Lined Writing Paper from Starts at Eight, and got him to copy his favourite phrases from the book. I also did up a quick questionnaire for him to get him to contribute some free responses. I got him to talk to me about what he wished to see Harold draw, and it was fun to explore his world of dragons, mummies and monsters.

His activity concluded with drawing anything he liked from the book. I encouraged him to copy what Harold drew following the lines and shapes that he sees.

Becks (4 years, going on 5)

For Becks, I printed the Harold Colouring Sheets from the same website but I asked her questions about the imagination versus the real. I know this is a book that takes our imagination to the farthest, which is altogether so lighthearted and enjoyable, but I got down to asking Becks questions to check if she could differentiate between fictitious and actual. I read somewhere that while it is developmentally normal for toddlers to have difficulties grasping the difference between real and make-believe, it should get pretty obvious for an older child.

Her task was to give me everything coloured the way she feels they should be coloured, and I was glad I got to see red apples and green trees. Everything was fine except she gave me a purple moon. Hmm. I’m sure some Harold is also in this girl, and I’m happy she loves to imagine too.

Nat (2 years, going on 3)

Lesson was short and simple for the littlest one: find the purple from our colour pencil and crayon stash, and colour away!

And colour he did!

It was a fruitful session of seeing purple, and enjoying one of our favourite reads this way!