Dr. Seuss's Birthday is March 2

How will you be celebrating?

Here's some ideas to get you started.

Request those library books now!

Happy Oobleck Day!

Enough of the cat. Bartholomew is where it's at.

(I think I've a read a few too many!)

Here's some things to do that go along with "Bartholomew and the Oobleck"

• To make oobleck, mix cornstarch and water, a little at a time. If it's too runny, add more cornstarch until it's "ooblified." We added green food coloring because it's green in the book.
• Make a weather wheel. Cut out a circle from cardstock and divide it into 4 equal quarters. Label them rain, sunshine, fog and snow. Draw or cut out a picture to go with each picture. Make an arrow and attach it to the center with a brad. The student can use it ti give a daily "weather report."
• Search for all the musical instruments in this book. (I found a whistle, a bell, and a horn.) Make your own instrument (here's some ideas) and experiment with it. Does it work when it's wet? What prevents it from making a sound? Can the tone change? Can it be louder or softer?
• Have your kids write about or draw a new kind of weather that they would create. (I imagine there will be a lot of sweets falling from the sky!)
• Create a still life with oobleck. This idea from Art Projects for Kids would look just like a bunch of objects covered in oobleck if you used green instead of white paint!
• Bible connection: This story reminds me of 2 Samuel 12 when Nathan the prophet confronts King David about his sin. David had made a huge mess, not of oobleck, but a huge mess nonetheless. And David apologized. His mess didn't go away as easily as the oobleck. There were consequences that remained. But David was forgiven. A good story to teach your kids. Just please don't ask me how to explain all the adult themes. Rubber duckies seemed to work, though!

Dr. Seuss: Resources

A ton of Dr. Seuss based activity ideas, crafts, and lessons can be found at Hubbard's Cupboard.

Homegrown Hearts has great learning activities based on Horton Hears a Who.

Seussville.com has fun games to go along with Dr. Seuss stories. The storymaker is my favorite!

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book? Kids can take their own survey and record their findings here.

Don't let the lack of images fool you. There's a lot of great lessons on this site that is conveniently organized by book.

Make goo and oobleck with scrumdilly-do. And part one has some great teaching ideas to use with Fox in Socks.

FiveJs had put together a great resource of teaching topics that work well with various Dr. Seuss books. It's organized by both topic and further down, by book title.

We have been having a great time with the Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook. We've made Goose Juice and Biggel balls so far, but there's so many more recipes we want to make!

Teaching character with Dr. Seuss

We've begun a theme unit on Dr. Seuss in preparation of his birthday next week on March 2^nd. In addition to being a lot of fun and fairly accessible new readers, many of Dr. Seuss' books lend themselves very nicely to teaching various character traits. Here's a list that I came up with:

• The Cat in the Hat: honesty, responsibility, obedience
• The Lorax: care for the earth/stewardship
• Bartholomew and the Oobleck: contentment
• The Sneetches: not judging based on appearances/looking at the inner qualities of a person
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas: anti-materialism/contentment
• The Butter Battle Book: getting along with others
• Horton Hatches the Egg: patience, commitment, value of life
• Horton Hears a Who!: compassion, protecting the powerless
• Green Eggs and Ham: trying new things, leaving your comfort zone
• Yertle the Turtle: humility and compassion in leadership
  

What other life lessons has Dr. Seuss taught you?

Teaching values, improving reading skills and having fun at the same time works for me!

Geisel's Titles

We all know Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat, but there are so many lesser-known titles by Dr. Seuss. It's been fun to become more familiar with them, and I still have a few on my to-read list. I also learned that Theo LeSieg is another pseudonym used by Dr. Seuss. (LeSieg is Geisel spelled backwards.) Here's what I believe to be a complete list of his works of children's literature:

• And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street
  
• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
  
• The King's Stilts
  
• Horton Hatches the Egg
  
• McElligot's Pool
  
• Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose
  
• Bartholomew and the Oobleck
  
• If I Ran the Zoo
  
• Scrambled Eggs Super!
  
• Horton Hears a Who!
  
• On Beyond Zebra
  
• If I Ran the Circus
  
• How The Grinch Stole Christmas
  
• The Cat in the Hat
  
• The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
  
• Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories
  
• Happy Birthday to You!
  
• Green Eggs and Ham
  
• One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
  
• The Sneetches and Other Stories
  
• Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book
  
• Dr. Seuss's ABC
  
• Hop on Pop
  
• Fox in Socks
  
• I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew
  
• The Cat in the Hat Songbook
  
• The Foot Book
  
• I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! And Other Stories
  
• My Book About Me
  
• I Can Draw It Myself
  
• Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?
  
• The Lorax
  
• Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
  
• Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?
  
• The Shape of Me and Other Stuff
  
• There's a Wocket in My Pocket!
  
• Great Day For Up!
  
• Oh, The Thinks You Can Think!
  
• The Cat's Quizzer
  
• I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
  
• Oh Say Can You Say?
  
• Hunches in Bunches
  
• The Butter Battle Book
  
• You're Only Old Once!: A Book For Obsolete Children
  
• I Am NOT Going To Get Up Today!
  
• Oh, The Places You'll Go!
  
• Daisy-Head Maisy
  
• My Many Colored Days
  
• Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!
  
• Gerald McBoing McBoing
  
• Ten Apples Up on Top!
  
• I Wish That I Had Duck Feet
  
• Come Over to My House
  
• The Eye Book
  
• I Can Write
  
• In A People House
  
• Wacky Wednesday
  
• The Many Mice of Mr. Brice
  
• Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog?
  
• Hooper Humperdink…? Not Him!
  
• Please Try to Remember the First of Octember!
  
• Maybe You Should Fly a Jet! Maybe You Should Be a Vet!
  
• The Tooth Book
  
• Because a Little Bug Went Ka-choo!

And now you know!

Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book

Write about your nighttime/before bed routine. Make it a list, a paragraph, or a mini-book.

Create your own news reports from home. What's going on today? Make a video of the news report performance.

Write word-form numbers in number form

Search a globe and figure out possible locations of the Audio-Telly-o-Tally-o Count machine halfway between Reno and Rome.

Make a tally chart and keep track of recurring events such as phone calls, cars driving by, a certain word said.

Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook has several recipes based on this book. Make Moose Juice, Goose Juice, Biggel-Balls, and Hoop-Soup-Snoop Group Potato Soup.

Make a list of nocturnal (nighttime) vs. diurnal (daytime) animals. We played guess the nocturnal animal with these sounds.

Fox in Socks

March 2^nd is the birthday of Theodore Seuss Geisel and has been proclaimed Read Across America Day in his honor. We're beginning our celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday a bit early. We'll be spending the next two weeks giggling and delighting over the wonderful words of Dr. Seuss. We began with Fox in Socks because it happened to coincide so nicely with our letter of the week, X.

• Word sort with –ox and –ocks words (-ox words: box, fox, pox, ox; -ocks words: socks, rocks, blocks, tocks, clocks) We also made a third category for –alks words that also rhyme like talks and walks)
  


• Practice making new words by using word families found in the book (-ick, -ose, -ame, -ue/-oo/-ew).
  


• Read the book as Reader's Theater. Newer readers can take the words of Knox. Reading the part of the fox is no easy task!
  


• Reading these tongue twisters in an effort to master them is a great way to get in some good fluency practice.
  


• Make your own tongue twisters. Start with a word chain, altering one letter or sound in the word and try to make a sentence out of them. For example: boat… goat… moat can become the "A goat is in a boat in the moat."
  


• Cut out paper socks. Decorate, creating pairs of socks. Play memory or match socks quickly, beating a timer.
  


• If you are very brave, make your own band broom parade. It can become a direction following exercise. Give directions like play loudly or quietly, hop on one foot, or walk backwards.
  


• Make a sentence game at Seussville.com
  


• Learn more about foxes.

Transportation: The Books

This theme unit turned out to be a bit of an author study as well since all but one of our books were by Donald Crews. His books are very simple and fairly readable even for a new reader, but they are so packed with vocabulary! I learned some new words myself! (Do you know what kind of boat a lighter is?) In a few of his books (Sail Away, Truck, Bicycle Race, Flying, School Bus) we found what we interpreted to be self-portraits "hidden" in the illustrations. I also learned that his daughter is author Nina Crews!


Literature (all by Donald Crews, unless noted otherwise):

Freight Train is a classic Caldecott and probably his best well-known work. (Vocabulary: caboose, hopper car, gondola car, tender, steam engine, trestles)

Harbor is packed with vocabulary relating to boats. See the last page of the book for a good picture glossary.

Bicycle Race is good for practicing reading number words. Tricky, though because they're out of order!


Truck, a Caldecott Honor book, at first glance seems like a wordless book, but is full of environmental print. A great way to learn traffic signs (SS K.4.3).


School Bus has a bit more traffic sign-related environmental print and is a great way for my homeschooler to live vicariously through all those lucky bus-riding, public-school kids.


Flying can be used to learn to identify relative location of objects (SS K.4.1). Very readable for new readers. (Vocabulary: taxiing, boarding).


Sail Away uses onomatopoeic words that can give listeners a chance to participate by making the sounds. (Vocabulary: moored/mooring, dinghy, swell, port, lighthouse).


Are We There Yet, Daddy? by Virginia Walters introduces basic map reading skills (SS K.4.2) and counting by tens, but backwards!