Friday, March 2, 2012

"These things are fun and fun is good!" ~ Dr. Seuss



  A week is just not enough time to celebrate all the wonderful works of Dr. Seuss but we tried. Dr. Seuss week might be the most fun unit I teach all year! I like to have a theme each day, so for the past few years, my schedule has been Crazy Hat Day on Monday, Silly Socks Day on Tuesday, Wacky Wednesday on, you guessed it, Wednesday and Green Eggs and Ham Day on Thursday. If I happen to be teaching five days, then the fifth day is Pajama Day and, hopefully, falls on Dr. Seuss's birthday. Because I am only teaching four days this year, we combined Pajama Day with Green Eggs and Ham day. Just because we have a theme, though, doesn't mean we limit ourselves in the books we read! This year's celebration was another fun-filled week!

We started with a new bulletin board. This year, I was inspired by the many wonderful ideas on Pinterest. The original sources can be found on my Preschool Ideas Pinterest board.I have not quite figured out how to link the source here yet.
Of course, we all wore our silliest hats. Apparently many of these children have been to Disney. We did some Cat in the Hat math and some Cat in the Hat Comes Back Science. In the book The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, the cat comes to visit and uses Mother's white dress to clean a terrible pink mess. Then he brings in his Voom to clean the dress. We tried to see if we could clean a terrible pink mess, too.
http://blogs.trb.com/features/family/parenting/blog/2011/03/    





I found this experiment on www.stevespanglerscience.com. It just goes to show that Oxyclean works every bit as well as the Cat's Voom in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back! I just used regular tap water so it took a couple of hours for the stain to come out completely but it works much quicker with warm water.

Tuesday, as I said, was Silly Socks day. We had lots of silly socks and we focused on feet most of the day. Of course we read Fox in Sox and The Foot Book.

We cut out pictures of feet and glued them to a foot shape because we still need lots of practice cutting and controlling how much glue we use!
We did a measurement activity using a fun foam "foot" that just happens to be a "foot" long. I designed the form and need to convert it to .pdf. As soon as I figure out how, I will link it here.
 
We did half of the measurement at school and then sent it home as "homework". Feel free to make up your own form to include items in your classroom to measure.

Wednesday was Wacky Wednesday. This year we had the added bonus of it also being Leap Day which is pretty wacky itself. We had the children dress in their wackiest attire and we "wackied" up the room a bit.

We read the story Wacky Wednesday by Theo. LeSieg which is Dr. Seuss' real first name and his last name spelled backwards. We let the children draw and water color their own "Seuss-like" character and in honor of Leap Day, folded origami frogs.

We also graphed colored Goldfish crackers and read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.



http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2011/03/dr-seuss-playdate-download.html

On Thursday, we celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday a day early with Pajama Day and Green Eggs and Ham. All week, we had readers come in to read us stories.




There are so many wonderful books by Dr. Seuss and so many activities that can be done with them, that a week really isn't enough time. There are numerous websites with Dr. Seuss ideas. Pinterest is just overflowing with great Seuss ideas. So get out there and look for more ways to celebrate Dr. Seuss. "Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! Ninety-eight and three quarters per cent guaranteed!"

3 comments:

  1. So many great ideas! I love that you practiced measuring with a foam foot. lol That's awesome! Thanks for linking up with us at the Kids Co-op this week. :)

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  2. What grade was your class that you did this with?

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    1. This was Pre-K 4s and 5s. They had a little trouble with the measuring but it is an introduction to measurement and gave them a little idea of how measurement works.

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