Have I mentioned before how much I love Dr. Seuss?  Well if not, I LOVE DR. SEUSS!  I think he is an extremely creative writer that engages his reader and his characters are super creative!  When I taught Kindergarten we always did a two week Dr. Seuss unit and read as many of his books as we could.  Mikayla has always enjoyed Dr. Seuss, which is why we have spent the last two weeks "studying" his books during our Toddler School time.  You can read about some of our past activities here, here, here and here.  These are just some of the activities that didn’t make it into any of the other posts because they weren’t geared towards any specific book, but just Dr. Seuss as a whole!

I colored a Thing 1 picture, cut into strips, numbered the strips and she had a fun puzzle to work.  She really enjoyed this and it was easy, so I think we will be doing more of these in the future!

I placed some Dr. Seuss stickers onto strips of paper and she cut in between the stickers for some fun cutting practice.

Since she LOVES stickers so much I let her take the extra stickers and place on a quick drawing of the words Dr. Seuss and a Cat Hat.

I made a color by number that revealed the Cat’s Hat.  She did a great job of coloring the numbers to correct color, but she struggled with coloring in the whole area.  Another easy project we can replicate for future activities!

Roll An Action Game.  First, I made a dice with six different actions (i.e. clap, hop, etc.)  Then, I laid out some Dr. Seuss number flash cards on the floor. She chose one, rolled the action dice and then completed the action the same number of times as her number card.  She is still not great with number recognition if anyone has any fun activities.

For our final installment of Dr. Seuss fun we focused on a couple of my favorite books:  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Cat in the Hat, and Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

After reading the book I had Mikayla put the correct number for fish in each numbered fish bowl.  I had planned to have her paint or stamp them, but stickers were easier on this particular day.  If you look closely at the picture on the right you will see a glimpse of our Horton made from a toilet paper tube.

Cat in the Hat

We made the obligatory Thing 1 and Thing 2 craft by painting our hands.  I still want to play a balancing game with her where she tries to balance objects like Cat in the Hat, but we managed to run out of time again!

Cat in the Hat Comes Back

We made a Cat Hat with the letters of her name.  She liked it so much, we had to make hats for some of her princesses out of strips of paper and toilet paper tubes.  Pictures are terrible, but you get the idea!

I made some finger puppets today while she was napping, but they did not turn out as planned.  The cat is not black because I didn’t have black pipe cleaners.  And the noses on Thing 1 and Thing 2 are a little large, but oh well.  I still think Mikayla will have fun with them!

I had also planned to do some stuff with The Foot Book, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.  If we do, I will post about it later.

We have continued our Dr. Seuss study this week with a few more popular titles:  Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches An Egg, Hop On Pop and There’s a Wocket in My Pocket.  Here are our activities:

Horton Hears a Who

We began by reading the book and then making a clover with a speck.  She is still playing with the clover and is amazed the speck never falls off!  I didn’t have any glitter this year which I usually use for my speck, so I just put a drop of hot glue and it works great (even easier than the glitter).  Then we grabbed Horton and watched the movie.  Please note that my daughters choice of snacks for the movie watching were plain noodles.  Too funny!

Horton Hatches An Egg

She was a little disappointed after this reading, because there wasn’t a movie to watch.  She thought there should be!  We settled for making a Horton character out of a painted toilet paper tube and some foam.  I did not manage to get a picture of this, but I promise it was cute!

Hop On Pop

We read the book and then got out some bubble wrap for her to Hop on Pop(s).  She had a blast and kept popping for several minutes!

There’s a Wocket In My Pocket

This was a last minute addition to our study because we found it for pretty cheap in Jo-burg last weekend.  We read the book and then played a game.  To play I put six items on a cookie sheet.  Then I had her close her eyes and removed one object to put in my pocket.  When she opened her eyes she had to guess which object was missing.  She did great at this game and we played several times back and forth.  Eventually she even started adding more items while my eyes were closed…clever girl!

I have just a few more activities up my sleeves so stay tuned!

For this installment of Toddler School we will focus on two more Dr. Seuss books:  The Shape of Me and Other Stuff and Dr. Seuss’s ABCs.  Like before, we read the book and then completed the activities.

The Shape of Me and Other Stuff

We made shape noodles.  She chose four of her favorite shapes and I drew them on some paper.  Then she traced them with white glue and glued cooked noodles on top.  She kept talking about a noodle eating poodle while doing this (from Fox in Socks) and she insisted on wearing her silly socks!

Then we took side walk chalk and made the shape of stuff by tracing them.  In this picture you can see her tracing her baby doll. 

Dr. Seuss’s ABCs

We made letters in salt.  We also just played with the salt!

We worked our Dr. Seuss ABC puzzle.  We also went on a letter hunt around the house.  She wasn’t really into this so I didn’t get any pictures.

Last week was Dr. Seuss’s birthday and since we were gone and/or busy for most of the week we decided to push back our Dr. Seuss fun to this week and next.  I have created (or stolen ideas from others) various activities to correspond with each of the Dr. Seuss books we have.  We read the books and then complete the activities.  Rather than posting about them all in one large post, I decided to break them down.  This post will be about Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks.

Green Eggs and Ham

We colored shapes green and then glued them onto the matching eggs to make Green Egg Shapes!

Then we made a green eggs and ham snack.  We started by pairing together two pretzel sticks (ham) and then choosing some green jelly beans from a pile.

Then we melted some white chocolate and put "globs" of it on the sticks to represent the egg whites.  She then placed the green jelly bean on top as the center of the green eggs.

Next up our Green Eggshell Art.  I saved the egg shells from last week’s Dr. Seuss dinner, washed them good and placed them in a Zip lock baggie.  She then smashed them to pieces.

I stuck a little green paint inside and she shook like crazy.  **Side note – sticking out her lower jaw like she is here is one of her favorite things to do these days…not sure why, it looks painful to me!

Then she squeezed glue all around a green sheet of paper.

Last, she sprinkled her colored egg shells on top of her glue.  Surprisingly, she wasn’t a big fan of having the painted egg shells stuck to her fingers.

Fox in Socks

We started by putting on some silly socks and reading Fox in Socks.  She chose to wear one Cat in the Hat sock and one One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish sock.

Then we worked her Fox in Socks puzzle wearing silly socks.

We even played a matching game with some socks.  I took socks apart and she matched up the pair.  She got frustrated when I tried to show her how to put the pairs of socks together, so we finally just stacked them.

Then she decided that she needed to put on all of her silly socks at one time and play with her babies.  Eventually the socks found their way to her hands and were used briefly as puppets!  She ended up wearing her silly socks for quite some time during the day!

Stay tuned for some more Dr. Seuss fun during the next two weeks!