Prepping For Seuss Week

I tried sharing a few Seuss posts on my Facebook page last night but there are just too many and I know you won't see all of them. So, I decided to put ALL of my posts into one mega post.  Buckle up buttercup because this is going to be a long post filled with Seuss inspired learning fun! 

Post ONE

This week we are celebrating Dr. Seuss.  Each day we have a different theme based on a Seuss book. It's tons of FUN! Before the week started, I did a few prep things to get ready. First, I made this chart for us to work on word families as we read our books. After we read one of the books, I pass out the cards and students all help to fill them out with that particular word family. I will probably glue them to a chart tablet when we are done for future reference. 

I also printed out these sight words from Tammy at Live Laugh Love Kindergarten. It's serves as two functions. First, students can sort words in a center by the number of letters in a word. Then, I created a group game for us to play. I printed off a few Cat in the Hats and hid them behind three words. I called on students to pick a word, read it, and take it if they get it correct.  If there was a Cat in the Hat behind the word, they got a sticker. We have played this every day and they LOVE it. It wasn't rocket science on my part but really anything we can do to practice sight words is fine by me. The words that Tammy created totally fit my Seuss theme too. Love!

All of our kinder classes have been busy doing fun artsy things too. Aren't these cute?

Monday all students were allowed to wear hats. We read the book 500 Hats. I'm not going to lie, that book was longgggg. What was I thinking making that a theme day? I mean, hats are fun and all but I could have picked a better book.  Several of my kids didn't bring hats so we made some. It was quick, easy and the loved it. Score! I told them to hide their faces because I was too lazy to put that many smiley faces on their picture. :)  This is not our entire class but you get the picture. 

Tuesday we read Fox in Socks. Talk about a tongue twister! We all wore silly socks. They had to promise to wear clean socks and I let them take off their shoes ALLLL day. It was fun. We also talked about what we would do if there was an emergency and we were shoeless (is that a word?).  Always prepared (not really...fake it until ya make it!). :) When we were looking at our library books, one of my students said, "Hey! My book is like our day..about socks!" I screamed out "Text to Self Connection in the House!" Haha! I'll take any learning opportunity I can get. :)

Today everyone dressed like they were 100. I don't have a picture to share because you really can't see the cuteness with a smiley face covering their granny glasses and powered hair. Let's just say there was a LOT of cuteness today. I just rocked my gray roots and my old lady hip!

This afternoon we wrote a letter to the Cat in the Hat. I passed out the paper, wrote the words "Dear Cat in the Hat" on the board, and told the kids to write a letter asking him to come to your house and what you would do. Oh. My. Goodness. I just LOVED their work. They were so funny and creative. Here are a few. I will share more later this week. Holy cuteness batman! I also gave them a small piece of paper to draw their own Cat in the Hat. They were so focused and love this assignment. 

Here is my poem for the week. I just took an excerpt from a Seuss book and added a few pictures.  It works. :)

Tomorrow is "dress like your favorite Seuss character" day.  We are also making green eggs and ham, well kinda. I will explain more on that later. Of course I, being the smart teacher that I am, left my t-shirt at school that I am supposed to wear tomorrow. Ugh. I really don't have a plan B. I know what you are saying, just put it on when you get to school but it hasn't been washed yet and still smells like vinegar from the printing. I'm not sure I could hang all day. Epic fail as my son would say!

I will be back later with more Seuss pics and other stuff we are doing in kindergarten. 

Post TWO

I just realized that I never posted my pics from Seuss week so here ya  go!

Our art teacher did these pictures in art class. Aren't they awesome? She is such an asset to our school and our kids do amazing work!

Each day we had a theme based on a Seuss book. We dressed up, made fun art projects and cooked crazy stuff!

Quick post just to give you a peek from that week and to upload my virtual memory so I remember what I did for next year. Ha! Seriously, I am always thinking..what did we do that week? Then I go to my blog and "remember". Ha!

Post THREE

I am getting ready for next week. Procrastination at its finest people!  It’s Read Across America week and Dr. Seuss day. Sad news though. Dr. Seuss Enterprises prohibits sales using names of his characters, books or clipart on Teachers Pay Teachers. I really don’t understand this because people purchase units to go along with books that they also have to purchase. I’ve bought many books simply because I have found amazing educational materials to extend our reading experience. Anywho, so I took down my Dr. Seuss Unit (sadness).

Here is a little freebie to create a hat you can use next week. What is a celebration without a cool hat? Print these on white cardstock, have students color and cut out, and staple on a sentence strip and Wha La! Instant characters.

Post FOUR 

Last week, I read Fox in Socks to my students.  I was just reading this book because it was a Seuss book and we wore silly socks to school. I taught alliteration to my class during the last grading period (per our TEKS/objectives) but my class didn't really get it. We were reading Fox in Socks and there are several pieces of alliteration that we stopped to discuss. It was a giant light bulb moment people. The next day we read Seuss's ABC book, which is an even better book to show alliteration. It wasn't on my lesson plans last week for my students to create an alliteration piece but when a door opens, you walk through it. :) When we were done reading, we went back to our seats. I gave each student a blank piece of paper. I walked around the room and asked each student to tell me their alliteration sentence before they wrote it. They wrote and illustrated their sentences on their own. I was one proud teacher! I am so glad that I stopped what I had "planned" to follow them and their curiosity.  This was a window I tried to pry open a few months ago but they weren't ready. This is the greatest lesson I learned when teaching Montessori, FOLLOW THE CHILD! 

Post FIVE

It's picture palooza time! Here is a peak of a few things we did last week. So. Much. Fun! 

I made a quick and simple sight word game out of green and white construction paper. The kids used small swatters to flip the words and read them. 

I usually cook green eggs and ham with the kids but this year I tried something different. We made hats out of strawberries and bananas, topped on a small cookie.  I made boiled eggs the night before (well, actually Grace made them for me). We put the yolk in a bag and added blue food coloring. Then, we squeezed the yolk into the center of each egg. Green eggs! Wha la!! We also enjoyed a teeny tiny piece of ham. It was a fun but quick activity and the kids loved it. 

These are my teammate's Thing One and Thing Two. We are making ours tomorrow. We did all make hats. We wrote thing 1-20 on them. They wore them all day long. I love how much they love to make and wear a hat. It is so simple but meaningful to them. 

After eating green eggs and ham, we wrote about it. :)

Friday, we participated in Renaissance Learning's Five Million Books Read and Tested Challenge. Fourth graders came down to our classroom to read with us and show us how to take AR tests. It was really fun. 

Each month we have a staff luncheon and each grade level is in charge of one month. Second grade hosted a Seuss theme. It was so cute!!

This week is our book fair. We have a book fair twice a year. Our librarian is AMAZING and goes all out with the theme. This time the theme is fiesta. Isn't this so fun?!! This is the front of our library. One day I will show you pics of the inside. It is such a magical place!

Well, there you go! Hopefully you found something to take back to your classroom for next week. I know some of these things take time to create, purchase and make, but I promise these experiences you are providing your students are memories they will never forget! I will be trying a few new things this year and I am expecting tons of learning fun (and possibly wine next weekend for the teacher, ha). I will post about what we did this year in a few weeks..so we can have it to remember for next year. Ha!

**If you found something you loved, please leave a comment or share your ideas with us too. We are always looking for something great to add to the craziness. 

Love and virtual hugs!

**For those of you who read my hot mess post from Wednesday, I did go to the doctor yesterday and apparently have bronchitis. I am at home today, praying for my substitute. Ha! I'm sure my kids will be fine but the mama bear in me always worries. I hope to be on  the mend soon! 14 days until I am setting sail and I really don't want to rely on breathing treatments. It's the little things!