With his birthday on March 2nd, celebrate this week — also dubbed ‘Read Across America‘ — with fun, wacky words and silly stories with these great ideas.
With the groundhog seeing his shadow, winter seems to drone on, so why not add some Wacky fun to March with a little Dr. Seuss.
Make Green Eggs
One of Dr. Seuss’ most famous books is “Green Eggs and Ham.” Along with pin the eggs on the ham activities, you can make your own “green eggs.” There are many recipes for green eggs, but many kids don’t really want to eat eggs. So, instead of using real eggs, you can use a little creativity and imagination with pudding, food coloring and vanilla wafers. Get instant vanilla pudding so your child can help. Show them how to use a measuring cup to pour milk/water into the pudding powder (great math concept). Allow them to stir until thick then add a couple drops of green food coloring. watch as the swirls of green turn into a bowl of green. Explaining how food coloring works or even mixing blue and yellow to make green makes a great science experiment! Once the pudding is complete plop a circular shape on a plate and put a vanilla wafer on top. Your pudding creation will look like green eggs with a yellow yolk. This also goes great for St. Patricks Day.
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Make a Family Foot Book
“The Foot Book” is another Dr. Seuss Fav by many. Why not join his left foot, right foot, clean feet, dirty feet joy of opposites and create a family memento. Teach your kids opposites by showing them their feet are little and yours are big and left from right. All you need is a few sheets of construction paper, a stapler, paint and feet of course. Place feet in paint and print them on construction paper. Make your feet into your own “Foot Book.” To keep it nice, laminate each page before stapling the book together. This makes a great memento to look at during graduation open houses as your child realizes another Dr. Seuss lesson of “All the Places You’ll Go.”
Play One Fish Two Fish Game
Nothing gets the family having fun quite like a game of competition. Not only can you play this game but you can design it. With “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, there are so many many fish you can make. Create them with your hand prints, feet prints or even trace them from the book. Then place a piece of magnetic tape on them. Next, create your fishing poles using a string tied to a pencil or stick with a metal paper clip on the end. Throw your pole into the pile of magnetic fish and see who can catch the most. To make it a little more educational based, write words that rhyme on the fish and fish for rhyming fish. If they don’t rhyme throw them back and try again next time. There are endless possibilities with magnetic fish from alphabets to word families and spelling. Be creative and have fun.
Make a Cat in the Hat Clothes Pin Craft
Of course, who can celebrate Dr. Seuss without the good old “Cat in the Hat?” All you need are some clothespins, bow tie pasta, rotini pasta, a hot glue gun, paint and a printed Cat in the Hat cat. Glue your rotini pasta onto the opening of the clothespin. Underneath your rotini, glue a cat face. Underneath your cat face, glue a bow tie pasta. Then paint your rotini pasta red and white like the cat hat and the bow tie pasta red. Pin the cat wherever you want.
Make a Lorax Cake
And, how can you celebrate any birthday without some birthday cake? There are tons of complicated ways to make a Lorax cake, but it can be super simple and your kids can help too. First, make a regular round cake from a cake box. Any flavor you like. Next, get some vanilla icing and turn it green either by using green food coloring or mixing yellow and blue to make it green (science). Spread it all over your round cake so it looks like grass. To make Lorax trees, make another cake box as directed on back of box. To make them into balls, (for the top of the trees) crumble two slices of cake into a bowl. Add one spoon of icing into the cake crumbles at a time until you can roll the cake into a ball. Put your balls in the freezer for 20 minutes. Have kids decorate the balls with icing and any other cake decorations. Place balls on straws and put in your green cake for a homemade Lorax cake.
Of course, all these activities are great ways to celebrate all Dr. Seuss has brought to our reading system, but reading his books with your kids is a great way to promote reading and celebrate his creativity in reading. Or perhaps your children might want to learn how to write their own Seuss like stories at creative writing camp? I hope you enjoy Dr. Seuss for a whole week with all his numerous, silly and adventurous books.