Dr. Seuss

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss's birthday, so this week we've been reading a few of his books and doing a couple related activities. The Boy on Fairfield Street is probably my new favorite Dr. Seuss biography for kids. I love children's biographies that actually talk about famous people's childhoods. The paintings in this book are also very nostalgic - they make you feel like you are going back in time. 

These messed up hats were something I made awhile ago when my kiddos were still in the preschool stage. Back then they just had fun matching them. Now they've moved on to playing memory. Based on the ages of your children you might want to use only 1/2 the cards for a game; they are so much alike it can be difficult. Click here for the free printable; you'll need to print it twice to make a memory game.

I don't think you can study Dr. Seuss without making Oobleck. Mini Man loves Bartholomew and the Oobleck. When I told him we were going to be reading Dr. Seuss that was his first request. This year we made the traditional recipe: 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. It creates a amazing substance (the scientific name is non-Newtonian fluid) that is both a liquid and solid. The kiddos had a lot of fun punching it - it acts like a solid. As well as, watching things sink in it; they sink very slowly, kind of like quick sand.

In years past, we made a glue slime ...either way be prepared for a bit of mess. Here's a picture of Mini Man from 2011 and a picture of BabyZ from this week. No worries, it all came off very easily in the bath.

The last couple of activities we did involved one of my kiddos favorite snacks, Goldfish. I had Mini Man and Little Lady read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Then they graphed the Goldfish they were having for a snack. To make it a little bit more complicated for them we had each rectangle worth two goldfish instead of one. The free graph printable can be found here. 

I also had them use the Goldfish to practice their multiplication facts. They rolled the red dice to see how many fish bowls they had and the white dice to see how many fish lived in each bowl. They filled in these facts on a worksheet and then added up the total off all their fishbowls; the one with the highest number won the game.

Click here for the fish bowl printable and here for the multiplication worksheet. Mini Man and Little Lady are working on memorizing multiplication facts, but you could also use the dice and fish bowls to practice adding. In a couple months I might reprint these and add numerals and dots, so BabyZ can practice one-to-one correspondence and number recognition. 

Every year our library hosts a little celebration for Dr. Seuss's birthday. I am hoping we can make it tomorrow, but other than that I think we are done with Seuss activities this year. If you are looking for more activities; be sure to also visit these posts: Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss, Celebrating Dr. Seuss, Easy Seussian Hats, Green Eggs to Ways, and A Parade of Things.