classroom activites for Dr. Seuss week

pool noodle sculptures

magnetic fishing

crazy straw and felt fine motor

sock matching/sorting

green eggs and more sorting and matching

cork and button building fun

fine motor connectors

blue sand and Dr. Seuss erasers

dry erase Cat in the Hat hats

oh the fun that we had: colored egg play

I whipped up a set of rainbow fried eggs to go along with our reading of Green Eggs and Ham. The children color sorted, matched, and play acted with the eggs all week. It was loads of fun and they most definitely DID like their eggs without ham.

 

 

 

 

 

oh, the fun that we had: seussian sculptures

 

This classic Seuss-inspired project is usually done with small balls of play dough. I did not want to use our play dough and wanted the children to explore a different medium and so I came up with this.

 

Our pool noodle slices are fantastic! They are great for water play, make for super fun stampers, are fun to build with when you add shaving cream, and have even become fried fish out in our play yard. After poking a few holes in them with some acrylic cocktail stirrers I picked up they became basis for poking pipe cleaners and play truffula trees into.

 

 

The set up included pipe cleaner truffulas, pipe cleaners, feathers, beads, cut straw pieces, and colored toothpicks. The children poked, and twisted away for a good half hour as they created sculptures that they then took apart to create another. They worked together and cooperatively and it was super fun and colorful to watch.

oh, the fun that we had: pink ink

Another fun project from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish was making Pink Ink (it's what the Yink drinks).  We do a lot of recipes in the classroom, both real and made-up (concoction making and experimenting). Recipe following falls right in line with early math skills. Children are learning sequencing along with cause and effect (what happens when we add something, what happens when we leave something out). Cooking and recipe following in the classroom is always exciting. The children also learn new vocabulary words and further develop all those motor skills that are so important to coordination, balance, and learning.

 

For our Pink Ink recipe I wanted to do something easy that mostly focused on following steps in order. My first thought was strawberry milk but that was just so pink. Then I thought of making a french soda without the fizz and off I went in search of juice. I knew we were going to use whipped cream and sprinkles so I went with a no-sugar added option. The problem with that is the more natural the juice the less pretty it is (not really a problem but it was funny when the pink ink was hardly pink).

 

The set up included clear cups on plates and a happy curly straw. The first step was to pour some juice into their cup. Each child took a turn and poured as much or as little as they wished. We do a lot of pouring practice in class when we make cocoa (which is always a treat and I need to do a post on the cocoa fun) and the children know that sometimes a spill happens and that's okay, we just clean it up. They all know where the dishtowels for cleaning up are which makes it easy and they own it.

After juice came milk  then whipped cream (we did not get a chance to make our own cream so I sprayed some on top for them).

 

After the cream came the sprinkles (which thankfully had soooo much color in them the drink did indeed turn pink after much stirring had happened) then the straw.

 

 

The children oohed and aaahed over their concoctions and went about investigating them as they would any set of science supplies I set out for them. I asked them to use their senses and tell me what they observed. There was a lot of enthusiastic sniffing and poking and tasting. Oh so much fun!

oh the fun we had: ring the gack

In One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish there is a page dedicated to The Gack and the game of Ringing the Gack where the children in the book toss rings upon the gack's antlers. I thought how fun would it be to have our own gack? Then I realized I had no energy to actually whip up one but we did have our classroom tree so why not get rings to toss onto it?  Oh my goodness! While trying to find an image of the gack for you I just now found this, this, and this. Fun stuff!

 

 

I originally wanted to use dollar store bracelets for our gack (from One Fish...) rings but could not find them anywhere. I was at Target and eyeballed this set of baby linking rings but did not want to pay $10 for them. I went back later and found them reduced to under $6 (online even cheaper) and snatched them up. The children loved tossing and hanging them on our gack. They also liked linking them together and/or sorting them by color. The colors are super fun and the sturdiness is much better than the cheapie dollar store bracelets I was thinking of. The following week, the children talked a lot about the rings, their gack, and how they connected the links. Along the way they made connections from their play to the literature and they picked up new vocabulary words such as connecting, rings, and links. It was stupendous fun!

oh, the fun that we had: graphing goldfish

 

 

During our Dr. Seuss week we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. We read it many, many times. One of our fishy activities was to graph goldfish crackers. I generally do not do worksheets in the classroom. These goldfish sheets were a take home project for the children to do at home. I wanted to familiarize the children with the process and so we set up an area for the graphing. It goes without saying the the mere presence of the bag of crackers was exciting. What was even more exciting was when I opened the bag and the children saw that the crackers were in different colors.

 

I used this graph printable and laminated it with clear contact paper so that it could be wiped down and used again. I placed a random handful in each child's cup and we discussed the graph and how it was the same yet different than our large masking tape graphs we use in the classroom for various searches and hunts.

 

It took a few tries for the children to get the hang of the graph. After they finished placing their crackers onto their graphs each child estimated which row/color of goldfish had the most. Each child counted their rows which spared conversations and estimations regarding who had the most/least, etc. After all the counting, estimating, and listing had happened the children got to eat their crackers.

 

After a round of hand washing the children got to count out ten crackers to take home for graphing at home. The parents were really keen on the activity and the children had a blast! Oh the fun!

oh the fun that we had: our dr. seuss week

We crammed a lot into our week of Seuss. It was all Seuss all the time and I'm just about pooped remembering it all. More thorough posts to follow but here is a snapshot:

 

 

 

Eraser matching in blue sand. I found the erasers at Target in the dollar spot and the sand came from Michael's. This was a lesson in conservation. I write that a bit wryly as this fine colored sand had the tendency to stick top to things and one of the children really liked pouring it onto the floor. I decided to add restrictions to how this was played with which was a first for the children. They are used to full body exploration and with this there were limits. It was a learning curve that opened up a discussion on how some things need to be played with differently.

 

 

The sock sort was a lot of fun. The children counted and sorted the socks all on their own. They would pile up the blue socks or the orange socks. They would hide socks from each other and ask Who has this sock? in a game they made up. I purchased three packs of three socks from the dollar store for a total of $3. Perfect and we can bring it out again next year. I may add a timer to the fun as well, or a bell.

 

 

 

 

 

I printed out these sock coloring sheets thinking I would send them home with the children to extend their Dr. Seuss week. Instead, I covered two sheets in contact paper and set them out as play dough mats. One youngster surprised me by spending a good thirty minutes press, rolling, and shaping the dough into a Seuss-shaped sock. There were beads and textured rollers set out as well.

 

 For one of our math projects we went on a star hunt. I used post-it note stars found on sale at an office supply store and stuck them all over the room. Masking tape was used to create our graph into two sections. One for orange stars and one for yellow stars. The children hunted and sorted then practiced their one-to-one correspondence as they counted the stars. The next class day the children found that the star were hiding again and off they went to search, graph, and count on their own. The quantity of stars was different and they were excited to tell me all about it.