Jon Klassen Learning Resources

CFE Levels Early and First

Resources created by Eilidh McLean

Contents of this resource

About Jon KlassenPage 2

About these resourcesPage 2

Introducing Jon Klassen: Activities for Early Level Page 3

Introducing Jon Klassen: Activities for First Level Page 3

This is Not My HatPage 4

The DarkPage 11

I Want My Hat BackPage 14

About Jon Klassen

Jon Klassen grew up in Niagara Falls, Canada, and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the author and illustrator of I Want My Hat Back, This is Not My Hat as well as the illustrator of Cats’ Night Out by Caroline Stutson, Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, The Dark by Lemony Snicket, House Held Up By Trees by Ted Kooser, and the other books in the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series. He also created concept art for Coraline, the stop-motion animated film based on the book. In 2010 he won the US Governor General’s Award for children’s literature (illustration).

  • The official Jon Klassen website:
  • More information about Jon Klassen can be found out here:

About these resources

These resources are full of cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Jon Klassen’s books with your pupils in library and classroom activities. Adapt and use as you see fit!

The resources have been produced to help you get the most out of our online Authors Live event with Jon, but you can use them at any point to engage pupils with his books.

You can watch Jon’s event on 11 September 2014 – here is the link to register for free:

If you don’t watch the event on the day, you will be able to view or download it afterwards from our Watch on Demand section:

Introducing Jon Klassen

Activities for early level

  • Jon is from Canada. Find out as much as you can about Canada. There is a sugar maple leaf on the Canadian flag – this is a tree native to Canada – find out about this tree, or draw your own maple leaf. Canada often sees heavy snowfall in winter – make your own snowy display. Find out about winter sports and draw some pictures of the equipment people might use in these sports.

Lit 0-14a/Lit 0-01b/Lit 0-11b/Lit 0-01c

Activities for first level

  • Jon has worked on a large number of books, and has also animated films, including Kung Fu Panda! Find out about animation by making your own stop-motion animations. Play doh or puppets will be good for this activity. When you come to read the books, you can make your own animations based on the characters!
  • Visit Jon’s Tumblr page at Have a look at some different images by Jon. The following ones might be a good start:

Image 1:

Image 2:

Image 3:

Use the images to make up your own stories. Ask yourself questions about the pictures to help you get ideas. After you have written your stories, hand them over to a partner who can do the illustrations for your story!

  • Alternatively, you could look at the illustrations above and come up with speech bubbles to show what the characters might be saying to each other.
  • Undertake a research activity to find five Jon Klassen facts and five books he has either written or illustrated.

Lit 1-06a/Lit 1-01a/Lit 2-01a

This is Not My Hat

Listening and Talking

Watch the book trailer for This is Not My Hat at . Have you seen any film trailers? Talk about what a trailer is: does it tell you everything that happens in the book? Why not? Does this trailer make you want to read the book?

Lit 1-09a

Writing/Expressive Arts

Create a wanted poster for the small fish. You should think about the following things:

  • Physical attributes – colour, size, shape
  • Last seen
  • Suspected location
  • Nature of crime
  • Reward
  • Suspected location

After this, you could create a Top 10 most wanted list, and design different posters. This could be made up of other literary villains. Here are some suggestions:

  • The two robbers in What the Ladybird Heard by Julia Donaldson;
  • The witch in Hansel and Gretel;
  • Rumpelstiltskin;
  • Manfred from Manfred the Baddie by John Fardell;
  • The rat from The Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson
  • The Grand High Witch from The Witches by Roald Dahl (see our Roald Dahl celebration event for tips on how to spot a witch:

You can set each reward according to whom you think is the most dastardly villain!

Lit 1-28a/Exa 1-03a

Sciences/Writing/Expressive Arts

There are plenty of fish-related activities you can do for this book!

  • Find out about other fish that live in the sea. If the big fish sent another fish to get his hat back, which fish would be the best at finding it? Which ones are the fastest? Which ones have the best eyesight?

Lit 1-14a

  • What kind of sea creatures would be good at hiding from the big fish? Use this web page to help you:

Lit 1-14a

  • The crab is an amphibian. Find out about other amphibians here:

Lit 1-14a

  • Explore food chains found in the ocean and research the different creatures found there. As a class create your own food chain. You can create a comic strip template to create your own food chain.You can learn more about food chains here: Alternatively, you could compare food chains found in woodland withthose found in the sea.

Lit 1-14a, Lit 1-25a, Scn 1-02a

  • This link takes you to view different animals (focus on sea creatures);
  • Check out our John Muir graphic novel here: You could design your own national park or nature reserve and think about what creatures you would put in there. Which species are endangered? Which are you most interested in? Which could survive in the British climate? Design information boards for the various animals: you could even bring your research to a friend and ask them to make up these boards.

Lit 1-28a, Lit 1-14a

  • Watch our upcoming Authors Live event with Steve Backshall to find out about his adventures in the wild! Don’t worry if you miss it, you can watch it on demand afterwards:

Health and Wellbeing/Expressive Arts/Technology/Literacy

As a class discuss the meaning of respect. Use the title of the book to the ways in which the small fish does not show respect towards the big fish. Have a class discussion about a time when children in the class may not have shown respect towards others.

After this, children create their own big and small fish using paper plates either with a straw or a lollipop stick taped on the back or by making sock/finger puppets.With a partner they can role-play a dialogue between the big fish and the small fish.How can the small fish act more respectfully towards the big fish?

HWB 0-09a / HWB 1-09a, EXA 0-02a/ EXA 1-02a, EXA 0-05a / EXA 1-05a EXA 0-12a/ EXA 1-12a/TCH 0-15a

The small fish thinks it is her/his right to steal the hat because it suits them better. Individually or with a partner design/create a hat that the small fish could give to the big fish by way of an apology.

HWB 0-10a / HWB 1-10a TCH 0-15a, EXA 0-12a/EXA 1-12a, EXA 0-05a / EXA 1-05a

Instead of stealing from and upsetting the big fish, make up a poster individually or with a partner with encouraging words the small fish could be saying to the big fish – you’re great! Looking good! What a pretty hat! And so on.

HWB 0-11a / HWB 1-11a /LIT 0-26a / LIT 1-26a/ LIT 1-28a / LIT 1-29a

How could the small fish have made friends with the big fish? Instead of stealing the hat and swimming away, he could have asked, ‘May I borrow your hat?’ ‘May I try your hat on?’Focus on the importance of manners and being polite. Children could draw a picture of the small fish with a speech bubble saying something polite. These could all be put together into a class book of good manners.

HWB 0-14a / HWB 1-14a / LIT 1-28a / LIT 1-29a

Technologies

Design a selection of hats as a class. Peg them onto a washing line. Using a model or a cut out picture of the big fish, children take it in turns to encourage the big fish to choose the hat that fits best.

Children can wear the hats and let another class decide who has the most creative hat. Have a hat parade in the classroom!

Also, you could set the hats out and ask the children to identify the smallest hat and then the largest hat. Ask the children to sort the hats into order of size.

Tch 0-12a/Tch 0-14a

Health and Wellbeing – physical wellbeing

Using the book as a stimulus, do either fish travel safely? Do they look where they are going? Do they stop and check it is safe to keep swimming? What could make the journey of the small or big fish safer? You can use this to link in with road safety awareness week and travelling safely to school.

Key road safety messages could be adapted to underwater ‘road’ safety, for example, instead of a zebra crossing, it could be a tiger shark crossing or a seaweed crossing and so on.

HWB 0-18a / HWB 1-18a

Health and Wellbeing – physical activity and sport

Fish themed PE warm up games:

Fish game: Children begin by sitting cross legged in a circle facing out. They are all given different fish names, shark, crab, dolphin, jellyfish, shark, crab and so on. Teacher calls out a fish name and all the children with that name have to run round the outside of the circle. The first child back to their space wins, the others have to sit turned into the circle until one person is left.

This game can also be played with children moving round the circle in the manner of their sea creature.

The bear in the honey pot, adapted to suit the characters in the book: Children sit in a circle. The big fish sit in the middle with their eyes closed wearing a hat. The teacher points to another child who has to tiptoe in and steal the hat before running back out through their space and round the outside of the circle back to their space where they can sit down unless they are caught by the big fish who will be chasing them the whole time.

Parachute game. Children sit under the parachute holding it tight at the sides. All are given a fish name. When the teacher calls out that fish name those children have to swap places.

HWB 0-25a/HWB 1-25a

Expressive Arts – dance

In pairs, children name themselves A and B. A is the small fish and B is the big fish. The small fish has to move around the gym hall using travel, turn, jump, gesture and so on and the big fish has to copy every move – as in follow the leader. Children then swap over.

Children can make up an interpretative dance for the whole book, whilst the teacher reads out the story. See this video of children performing a dance to Shark in the Dark for ideas.

EXA 1-08a

Health and Wellbeing

Using the smaller fish stealing the hat of the big fish as a stimulus, have a circle time discussion on stealing, keeping secrets, sharing a secret, feeling scared and feeling upset when something of yours is taken. For more opportunities to discuss people treating each other fairly, have a look at our Authors Live Heroes and Villains event with Julia Donaldson:

Class discussion – how would they feel if someone came along and took your object because they thought it suited them better?With a partner discuss how that would make you feel. What would you say? How would you act?

What should the person who took it say? Role play the situation.

HWB 0-45b / HWB 1-45b/EXA 0-12a

Listening and Talking/Writing

Children match up different feeling words with the facial expressions of the big fish.

Children could also take turns to choose a feeling word from a sack and act it out. The rest of the class have to guess what the feeling is.

LIT 0-01c

Retell the story but change the setting to a jungle, desert, rainforest, garden, school playground etc and state how that would affect the animals encountered. Children make up their own comic strips up based on the book, but change the location and characters. They can change the location to a desert, a jungle, a rainforest, flats, a street, a garden

LIT 0-09b / LIT 0-31a LIT 1-22a LIT 0-26a/LIT 1-26a

Listening and Talking

The hat is too small for such a big fish which makes it funnier that the big fish wants it back when it really does fit the smaller fish. Ask children think of an animal and a piece of unsuitable clothing and act out the story.

Lit 1-09a/Eng 1-31a/Exa 1-14a

Expressive Arts

Puppets, sock puppets, masks could all be used to add authenticity to the above activity. For more ideas on creating puppet shows, have a look at this case study on our website:

LIT 0-26a/EXA 0-12/EXA 1-12a/EXA 0-13a/EXA 1-13a/EXA 0-14a/EXA 1-14a

Numeracy – Number, Money and Measure

Comparing the two fish and the hat, one is big one is small, one is bigger, one is smaller. Children could draw their own big and small fish and their own big and small hats. Using books or the internet, children research the actual size of sea creatures and compare to their own height. This would make an interesting display.

MNU 0-01a

Expressive Arts

After children have designed their own hats and fish, they should decorate them with other materials stuck on, including recycled materials, fabric scraps and so on. These could be displayed in the classroom.

EXA 0-02a/ EXA 1-02a

Transition Activities

  • Primary children could design an underwater themed background with reeds and collage a big fish. Nursery children could print patterns onto small fish templates which could be added to the display. Invite the nursery children into the primary classroom to add their fish.
  • Both primary and nursery children decorate a hat template. The hats are then displayed in the primary school and the nursery children are invited in to see them.

EXA 1-03a / EXA 0-02a

The Dark

Listening and Talking

Watch the book trailer for The Dark at Have you seen any film trailers? Talk about what a trailer is: does it tell you everything that happens in the book? Why not? Does this trailer make you want to read the book?

Lit 1-09a/Lit 1-07a

Listening and Talking

Looking at the front cover of the book, what is this story going to be about? Why do you think that?

Draw a picture of what you think could be hiding in the dark. At the end of the book, compare what is in the dark with what you thought initially. Are your surprised? What does this tell you about the fears we sometimes have? Are they not as scary as we first thought? Why?

Lit 0-16a/Lit 0-17a/Lit 0-19a/Lit 0-01c/Lit 0-07a/Lit 0-16a/Lit 0-17a/Lit 1-06a

Social subjects/writing

Laszlo is a name of Hungarian origin. Find out about this country. What traditions might Laszlo and his family celebrate? How far is it from your location to Hungary? How many medals did Hungary win at the last Olympics, and for what sports? What natural landmarks are there? What is the capital city? Write a letter to Laszlo telling him what kind of traditions and customs we have in Britain.

Alternatively, you could plan a visit to Hungary. Find out how much money you would need for hotels, food, activities, travel and so on.

MNU 2-09a/Lit 1-14a

Sciences

  • Find out about the Sun and Moon. You could write your own poem from each object’s point of view – check out our resources for children’s poet James Carter to help with this:

Scn 0-06a/Scn 1-04a/Scn 1-06a/Eng 1-31a

  • Watch our upcoming Authors Live event with Lucy Hawking to find out about the solar system Don’t worry if you miss it, you can watch it on demand afterwards:

We also have some great space-related resources here:

  • Find out about electrical power. You can use this game to help you:

Scn 0-09a/Scn 1-09a

Writing

  • How is the reader persuaded that the dark is scary? What words show this? How could you persuade an audience the dark is scary? Or change it and make the dark less threatening? What words would you use?

Lit 1-20a/Lit 1-28a/Lit 1-29a

  • Create your own dark. What would the dark look like if it was a person or figure? How would you show its personality? Draw a picture of the dark creeping around the house….behind the shower curtain and so on.

Lit 1-09b/Lit 1-31a