As a Kindergarten teacher I lived for Dr. Seuss! My classroom walls were painted with many different characters and every year Dr. Seuss was my theme! So when the opportunity came to celebrate Dr. Seuss (March 2nd) and all his wonderful books, I made sure to go all out! Each day of the week would focus on different books and different literacy, math, science and social studies lessons. We even tried green eggs and ham, which many kids surprisingly enjoyed! The looks on their faces were priceless!
Here is a little background information on Dr. Seuss aka Theodor Seuss Geisel. Dr. Seuss was born March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He attended Dartmouth College, where he adopted his famous pen name. In addition to Dartmouth, Dr. Seuss also attended Oxford University. Upon leaving Oxford he then started his career in illustration with magazines such as Vanity Fair and Life. After WWII Dr. Seuss focused on creating his famous children’s books. He published over 60 books during his career. To celebrate Dr. Seuss’ amazing career and life March 2nd, his birthday has been name National Read Across America Day.
To celebrate Dr. Seuss with your children – any day of the year- I’ve selected a few of my (and my children’s) favorite Dr. Seuss books and added an activity as well! Be sure to check out Seussville online as well for great activities and resources! Enjoy!
The Cat in The Hat
There are so many great activities to do with this book, it was hard to choose just one! Although my favorite was making the cat in the hat’s hat! Using a hat shape, we glued red stripes on to make the pattern (lesson in itself!) and glued the hat onto a paper plate complete with cat face! Don’t worry, we didn’t stop there, although you could with younger children. For kindergarten and first graders you could also incorporate the “-at” family (cat, hat, mat, bat, flat, sat, fat) words into the hat. Have your child write the initial letter or the whole word to complete the -at family words. Here is another great resource for “hat” activities!
Green Eggs and Ham
This one made me laugh every year and even at home my son has enjoyed it! Simply make scrambled eggs and puree them with spinach! You can also use green food coloring but I like to use the spinach because my son avoids eating lots of green vegetables. Cook up some ham to go with it and viola! Breakfast and a lesson all in one! If you wanted to take this one step further and had a large group of kids, before eating ask the children to think about if they will like green eggs and ham. They can graph their responses using their names under yes/no or pictures! After eating have them compare!
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
This story ties great with a graphing lesson! You can find many graphing templates online or simply create your own. This lesson can be a simple color sorting activity for younger children or compare/contrast and graphing lesson for older children. You will need rainbow goldfish for this as well. On your graphing template (Goldfish Graphing) have children sort their goldfish crackers by color. They can glue the fish to the paper or color the appropriate blocks! Here are a bunch of other great activities for One Fish, Two Fish!
The Foot Book
This is another great book to use for math, specifically measuring! Make a list of items to measure, making sure they are larger items. Children will use their feet as a form of measurement. They can measure their bed, a wall, a chair, a desk, a book, etc. Another measurement idea would be to use smaller forms of measurement (unifix cubes, paper clips, pennies) to measure the child’s foot. If you really wanted to be fancy you could start with estimation and then have the child measure! So many options, so many great learning opportunities!
Fox in Socks and Hop on Pop
Both stories are great for learning about rhyming words and word family practice. You can have words written for children to “hop” to the rhyme or picture cards with younger children to match the rhyming pairs!
I hope you enjoy Dr. Seuss and his stories as much as I do! Celebrate this wonderful author with one of the activities above or any other crazy zany things you love to do!
Be sure to check out all the articles for celebrating Read Across America Day!
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