Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite author studies.  I live for this time of the year.  He has so many books with wonderful lessons but one of my favorite things is adapting lessons from year to year because it is so easy with his stories.  The books also just lend themselves to integration.  Over the past few years, I have had a student teacher who is implementing during Seuss.  This is the first year in about five where it has been all me.  I have had so much fun this past week and looking forward to continuing this author study for two more weeks until Spring Break!

One of the first books we read was Yertle the Turtle.  I also love Seuss because of the history behind his books.  This one is about Hitler and although I didn't tell my class that, we did talk about what a leader is to give them a reference for Yertle and his power.we compared Yertle to our president, governor, principal, and the classroom teacher.  I chose to use a Venn Diagram to compare him to King Bidgood because my class loved that book.  It was amazing the comparisons they made.  

We also painted and made turtles for the hallway.  My class was begging to not be on the bottom like Mack but they said they didn't want to be on the top like Yertle.  They are beginning to amaze me with their connections they make even when it isn't right in the moment of a literacy lesson.

 

We read And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street earlier this year but I am all for reading the same book multiple times.  We listened to it again and wrote about something we might see on our way to or home from school for a class book.  This is one of my favorites because he did it independently!  I know you can't see thunder and we did have a discussion but I loved that he worked independently and was creative.  I am still seeing children struggle with the use of capitals and lowercase so we always talk about this and I model it but I think with time, it will come.  More than anything, I want them to be confident and love writing.

 

We also brainstormed a list of places we could eat green eggs and ham before we read the book.  After listening to it, we made a class book. I intentionally started the list before reading the book to get some variety on the list and hoping for some variety in the class books.

They are still building their confidence in themselves as writers (and illustrators) because many of them used car for where they would eat them. We also talked about the difference between in and on so we could add both of those words to the word wall.  

 

I loved this one! Can you tell we live in a football town? Another example of differentiation because the fact that this learner wrote the sounds for football was amazing for him.

This is an example of one of the little ones using the list to spell his word.  As you see, there are still a mixture of upper and lowercase letters but this child is using their resources and was independent.

 

A green eggs and ham snack for the same day we read the story! I prefer to cook on Fridays because while it is so much fun it also is exhausting!

 

We made oobkeck on Monday after I paraphrased the story.  They made some comparisons to the leader in this story to King Bidgood.  We spent "extra" time this week writing descriptive words to describe oobkeck.  One of the best decisions I made was putting it in a container inside the sensory table instead of directly.  It was disgusting by the end if the week and I decided to dump it and the container!

We made green eggs and ham on Friday for snack.  Each child got to crack their own egg.  Some had never had that experience before!  We added the food coloring and Velveeta before cooking.  We also talked about solids and liquids.  While they were eating the eggs one of my little boys said, "I have never had green eggs and ham before but this is amazing!"  It totally made my day!

We also had "pink ink" to drink or strawberry milk.  Same said child that loved the eggs was caught blowing bubbles in his milk.  There are times by Friday afternoons where I just have to laugh.  This was one of those times.  I laughed after I told him to stop!

 

Of course, we graphed whether or not we liked green eggs and ham.

We made at words after listening to The Cat In The Hat.  I might have been really excited when they pulled in the diagraph ch to make chat!

 

Then we made hats!  Our school is celebrating Wacky Wednesday and kindergarten is dressing up with hats and cat whiskers.

 

When they made their hats, they could use our list or make their own words.  The hats took multiple step directions and for the most part, we were successful! 

 

Here are our whiskers.  Using a Popsicle stick, they glued the whiskers on.  I used a hot glue gun for the pom pom nose.  We are requesting that children wear red or black on Wednesday to go with the hat and whiskers.

 

My school is decorating doors for Read Across America week.  I love this quote from Horton!  That is where my mind went.  We listened to My Many Colored Days which was published after Seuss' death. We talked about warm and cool colors and how they make us feel.  We used water colors to paint people.  They were asked to use warm or cool colors.  I love the way it all came together.  

 

Last summer, when Target had Seuss all over their dollar spot I stocked up.  I even made the goody bags and had it all ready and almost forgot!  I will send them home with children tomorrow.

What's your favorite thing about teaching Dr. Seuss?  What is your favorite Seuss book?