The Lit Kit Subscription Box is your all-in-one, ready-to-use cross-curricular resource designed to save you hours of planning while creating meaningful learning experiences your students will love. Each month’s box includes engaging, hands-on activities that seamlessly integrate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies around a common theme.
Instead of teaching each subject separately, your students make authentic connections across the curriculum, helping them build deeper understanding and retain what they learn. Every activity is thoughtfully designed to spark curiosity, increase engagement, and make learning fun—all while giving you everything you need to simply open the box and teach.
This box includes 6 different cross-curricular themes: Apples, Bats, Reindeer, American Symbols, Rainforests, and Oceans.
The apple box will be for September, the bat box for October, the reindeer box for December, the American Symbols box for February, the Rainforest box for April, and the Ocean box for June. All of these boxes have a similar purpose: to save the teacher time in planning so you don’t need to spend hours looking on Pinterest, Google, or TPT- it’s all ready to go in one box! All the posters are already printed out in color, laminated, and cut out for you! It’s Brilliant!
You may be asking what I can do with all of these activities in the box? Turn it into a Theme Center! This is one of my Literacy Centers that I switch out between Science and Social Studies! Since this Lit Kit has cross-curricular activities for reading, writing, math, and science, you can turn it into a theme center!
My theme center has a bulletin board with science posters and a title at the top. On the shelf below, I have mentor texts, puzzles, math games, puppets, felt board characters, and a writing center template. If you’ve never had a theme center before, this might be the perfect time to add one if you decide you want to purchase the Lit Kit.
So What’s Inside the Box?
Exclusive Cross-Curricular Lesson Plans:
In my teacher membership, I’ve written exclusive cross-curricular lesson plans that I’ve added to the Lit Kit box. They include 14 days of reading, writing, math, science, or social studies, but you can easily stretch these lessons out for longer. Each lesson includes an objective, a suggested mentor text, explicit directions, an anchor chart or vocabulary card, and an interactive notebook or writing craftivity. Each lesson builds upon the other and is very easy to implement. When you open the Lit Kit box, the lesson plan will be on top. There will also be a QR code to scan for the activities for the lessons.
Reader’s Workshop Activities:
Reading Activities: 2 Mentor Texts – Ten Apples Up On Top and How Do Apples Grow? I’ve selected two of my favorite mentor texts to read to your students to include in this box. They are fabulous for extending your students’ learning and making cross-curricular connections. Have you ever read literature during your math lesson? Or had your students write during science time? Well… this is your lucky day!
There are also quite a few lessons about Johnny Appleseed where your students can learn about what a Tall Tale is and write a timeline of his life.
Math Workshop Activities:
The 1st math activity is the Apple Felt Tree. It has a felt apple tree, apples, and numbers to match. Your students can put a number on the tree and match the apples to the number. This is particularly helpful if you teach kindergarten to practice one-to-one correspondence and matching the number with the quantity. Your students can also put the numbers in order from least to greatest and practice counting forward and backward.
The 2nd math activity is called Fill the Apple Tree. This math game is particularly fun because the students are using silicone trays as a 10-frame! They are also using the Fill the Apple Tree template, apple counters, and an Expo marker. There are two different types of templates: the first one has the first addend of 10 already there, and the students have to write the unknown number that equals 10.
The second template has both addends empty, so your students have to use their prior knowledge to write both friends of 10. That’s why the silicone trays come in handy! The students can fill the trays with different numbers and then find out the missing addend. Again, you can teach this game one time and then switch out the silicone tray, templates, and easers to match your month and holiday!
The 3rd math activity is the Addition/Subtraction Math Mats. These math mats are super fun and engaging-especially if you use plastic animals or candy as counters! You can teach this game once and then just switch out the templates and counters to match the month or holiday. This game also comes with addition and subtraction story problems for your higher readers.
All you need are the addition & subtraction math mats, apple erasers, apple spinners, dice, and story problem cards. You can use holiday erasers, plastic dinosaurs, ocean animals, farm animals, insects, or candy such as candy corn, gumdrops, and Hershey’s Kisses. The students will build the story problem on their mat depending on whether they’re reading the questions or rolling the dice. Then, at the bottom, they will write their number sentence to match. This game comes with three different templates: 2-number addition, 3-number addition, and subtraction.
The 4th Math activity is BUMP. This is one of my students’ favorite games! It’s so easy and fun to teach! Inside the box, you will find a BUMP game that is an Apple Theme. It has red and white snap cubes and red dice to go with the barn. There is an insert inside the box that tells the materials and directions on how to play the game. Or, you can watch the video!
The 5th Math Activity is Ten Apples Up On Top! You can give your students the apple spinner or dice, and whatever number they land on is the number they will make with the apples on top of the animal’s head! Then, they can see which animal has the least and which one has the greatest! So fun and engaging! I just love connecting math and literature together!
Science & Writing Activities:
For science, you can read the mentor text: How Do Apples Grow, which is inside the Lit Kit! There are Apple Life Cycle sequencing cards that you can use on your pocket chart when you teach the life cycle. You can hand out the cards to your students and see if they can put them in order. You can also put these cards up on your theme center bulletin board!
Another fun activity that is inside the box is the Seasons of the Apple Tree cards. Your students can learn about the 4 seasons and how the apple tree changes and why it changes from season to season. There’s a craftivity in the Lit Kit that shows the 4 seasons with thermometers.
Connecting properties and apples is also fun. You can do a science investigation using apples to describe their properties. You can weigh them, measure them, describe their color, shape, size, and texture. Or, you can investigate your 5 Senses using apples. You can taste, touch, hear, smell, and see the apples and illustrate your observations. All of these science activities are in the lesson plan!
Writing About Apples:
Who doesn’t love stickers? You can give your students the Sticker Story template and have them color the apple tree and write a story about it. Then, you can give them apple stickers to put on the tree to complete their sticker story! So fun! Just remember to remind your students to color and shade the background first before they put their stickers on the tree. It’s much easier to color!
These are just some of my favorite activities from the Lit Kit, and the best part is that you will get 6 Lit Kit boxes per year, and they will look very similar to this one except have a different theme! I cannot wait to share all of them with you! If you are interested in subscribing to my Lit Kit box, click HERE. If you’re interested in reading about my Math or Writing Center Subscription Boxes, click HERE.
This is my favorite way to teach- and I hope it will become your favorite way too! Until next time, let’s take your classroom to the next level!
