Dr. Seuss Week

As most people who are teachers or have young children know, last week Wednesday was Read Across America Day. Because this falls on Dr. Seuss's Birthday, I always take this week to do activities centered around Dr. Seuss books.  There are lots of activities through out our entire school including theme dress-up days, a Kindergarten feast of green eggs and ham, and guest readers from our district central office.  Even though it was a short 3 day week for me, it was an exhausting week.

Usually, I read the same story for 2-3 days, so we can work on comprehension, but during Dr. Seuss week, there are too many books and too little time.  Here's a peek at our week:

Day One we read "My Many Colored Days".  This is my absolute favorite lesser known Dr. Seuss book.  I love anything to help kids explain their emotions and the pictures are so vivid and engaging. Then we made a picture about how a color made us feel.  Each kiddo picked a color, colored the person from the story, and practiced writing their names.  I filled in the color and how they said it made them feel.

 My students all work on the same activity, but changed to meet their needs.  Some write their names independently, some copy from a card, some trace, and some do a combination of writing, tracing, and copying.  It really is how they can best practice and make gains.

Day Two was all about the "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish".  Every year, I forget how long and hard to read out loud this story is.  More than one of my students found it hilarious that I had to stop and reread parts so it would come out clear.  Our table activity was then sorting red and blue squares of paper onto fish and then writing the color words by the correct fish.

Again each student got the writing adaptation they needed to complete that part of the project.  This guy had me cracking up because he had no problem writing the color words copying, but was made when he had to trace fish.  Never a dull moment and next time, I'll make sure he'll get copying for both!

Day Three was "The Cat in the Hat".  This is by far my student's favorite story and they all cheered when I said it was our story that day.  As an extra special treat, we watched a read aloud from YouTube on the SmartBoard.  After, we went to the tables work on our letter matching with our names to make the Cat's Hat.  For my students who were ordering the letters in their names without matching, we also talked about patterns because it helped with self-checking their work.

 While Dr. Seuss week is a fast paced, whirl wind, it is full of great learning opportunities.  Check back for an update on next weeks beginning learning about Things that Go!