Where The Wild Things Are Activities

Practical Ways to Use Where the Wild Things Are in a Classroom or Home Setting

Most people grab a copy of Maurice Sendak's book and then scramble to figure out what to do with it. I've run through this cycle more times than I care to count, usually in October or whenever some teacher decides the theme needs to fit the calendar. The book itself is short, roughly 48 pages, and the activities that come with it tend to fall into three buckets: arts and crafts, writing prompts, and simple drama work. That's it. Nothing fancy. But getting the balance right is where most people trip up. The craft stuff is the easiest to pull together but also the most overdone. Paper plate monsters, cardboard claw gloves, wild rumpus dance moves. These work fine for lower elementary, maybe K through second grade. By third grade and up, kids can smell the filler. They know when something is just busy work. I stopped doing the paper plate monsters entirely after about 2019. Kids weren't engaged, and honestly, neither was I.

Where The Wild Things Are Activities That Actually Work

What tends to stick with kids, at least the ones I've had in front of me, is anything that asks them to make a choice. The book is fundamentally about a kid who runs away and then comes back to find his supper still warm. That's a specific emotional arc. Any activity that lets kids explore that arc, even tangentially, lands better than a coloring sheet. I use a simple three-step writing exercise now. First, kids pick one Wild Thing and give it a name and one specific trait. Not a whole backstory, just one thing. Then they write a paragraph about what happens when Max discovers it. Finally, they write the ending where Max returns home. This takes about 25 to 35 minutes with second or third graders. Some finish faster. A few need the extra time. It's manageable. The trick most people miss is that the book works because of its pacing. The wild rumpus section is roughly a quarter of the book but it's the longest section chronologically. Kids feel that shift when they read it aloud. If you skip that rhythm in your activities, you're missing the structural point. I make sure any reading or performance activity preserves that buildup and release. It matters more than you'd expect.

Common Pitfalls I've Run Into

The biggest problem I've hit is trying to stretch one book into a full week of content. Parents and administrators love that idea. It doesn't work. The book is 48 pages. You can get maybe three solid sessions out of it before you're recycling the same material. I learned this the hard way when I tried to make a "Wild Thing curriculum" last out ten days. By day six, the kids were glazed over and so was I. We cut it to four sessions and everything improved immediately. Another issue is the drama work. Some educators push hard for the wild rumpus role-play and end up with a classroom that's literally unmanageable for twenty minutes. I found that doing the movement component seated at desks works almost as well and keeps the noise level survivable. Kids still get to use their hands and bodies, they just do it in place. The engagement numbers don't drop measurably. There's also the craft trap. You can spend hours making elaborate Wild Thing masks and the educational return is minimal. I switch to a quick sketch and label exercise now. Kids draw their Wild Thing in three minutes and then write two sentences about what it does and what it eats. That's it. Takes ten minutes total for the class. The output is actually useful for the writing portion that follows.

What to Use Instead When Time Is Tight

If you only have one session and no prep time, read the book aloud slowly. Pause after the wild rumpus and ask kids to describe three things their own Wild Thing would look like. Then pause again at the end and ask why Max comes back. That discussion alone usually covers the thematic core without any worksheets or materials. I've done this on days when everything else fell apart and it still produced the most honest responses from the kids. I also recommend against the movie tie-ins unless you have a full period. The Spike Jonze film is great but it's a different interpretation and runs about 100 minutes. It's not an activity. It's a screening. Pairing it with the book is fine if you're deliberate about it, but don't present it as a supplement to the reading. Kids will notice the differences and the comparison is where the actual learning happens. One last thing that nobody talks about: the book's text repetition. "And the wild rumpus started" appears multiple times with slight variations. Using that pattern for a mini-lesson on how authors use repetition is probably the highest ROI minute you'll get from this entire resource. I add that in during the second session and third graders pick it up fast. They start applying it to their own writing without much prompting.