Activities and ideas for a substitute teacher to use in the classroom using the Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson.

The Gruffalo is my favourite children's story.  I just love it and can't get enough of it. I found some fun activities on the internet, to do in the classroom, after you read the story to the kiddos. You can use the activities for all ages. Just adjust the level of difficulty.

1.  Listen activity: Give each student an outline of the Gruffalo. They need to follow the instructions of the teacher: 

• Colour the eyes orange.
• Colour the prickles purple.
• Colour his tongue black.
• Draw a mouse in front of the gruffalo.
• Draw grass underneath him.
• Draw the sun in the right top corner. 
• Colour the body brown. 

2.  Draw and label your gruffalo. Use the following words to help you.
      Tusks, claws, jaws, knees, toes, wart, eyes, tongue, prickles.
      You can also use the outline of the Gruffalo to label the different parts.

 

3.  Create your own monster. Draw it on an A4 or A3 paper. Give it a name, what does it eat, where does it live?

4.   Fill in worksheet or the students can copy the coloumns from the board. (I will make the worksheet available on a later date.)

Answers are in red

Characters	Where they live	Asked the mouse to join them for:
Fox	Underground house	Lunch
Owl	Tree top house	Tea
Snake	Logpile house	Feast

5.  Act out the gruffalo story in groups.  Students can make their own props or use templates. Here's a mask of the Gruffalo that I found on the official website of the Gruffalo.

6.  Add one more animal to the story. Fill in the blanks.

A mouse took a stroll through a deep dark wood. A _________________ saw a mouse and the mouse looked good.                        (animal) “Where are you going to, little brown mouse? Come and have __________________ in my ______________ house.”                                         (description of food)                          (type of house) “It’s _______________ kind of you, _______________,  but no –        (adjective/describing word)                                     (same animal) I’m going to have ________________ with a gruffalo.                                     (decription of food) Draw a picture of your animal.

Example:

A mouse took a stroll through a deep dark wood. A tiger saw a mouse and the mouse looked good.  “Where are you going to, little brown mouse? Come and have brunch in my jungle tree house.”                                    “It’s awfully kind of you, tiger but no –     I’m going to have brunch with a gruffalo.                                   Draw a picture of your animal.

7. Change all the adjectives: Let the students first underline all the adjectives with a colour. Now they need to come up with new adjectives for their gruffalo.  Give students an outline of the gruffalo, they can now colour the gruffalo using their adjectives or they can draw their own gruffalo.

But who is this creature with terrible claws And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws? He has knobbly knees and turned-out toes And, a poisonous wart at the end of his nose. His eyes are orange and his tongue is black; He has purple prickles all over his back.

8. Using paper plates, let the students draw a picture of what they think the gruffalo’s favourite food looks like.

·         Scrambled snake

·         Owl ice-cream

·         Roasted fox

·         Make their own (they can use the animal they used for activity 6, ex. Tiger soup

I hope you find some of these activities useful and fun!