Dr. Seuss

It’s Dr. Seuss’ Birthday today.  I hope everyone is having fun celebrating Reading Across America Week. 

Today I have many activities planned that we have done in the past like eating Swedish Red Fish as we read One Fish, Two Fish.

Or making our own Foot Books.

Or making “The Cat in the Hat” Hats.

We ALWAYS have green eggs and ham for dinner.  There are also so many activities to print (and I have printed many of them).

Here are some more ideas, by book, to do with your kids:

Green Eggs and Ham

Eat Green Eggs and Ham snacks or meals

Make a list of green foods

Make a list of words that rhyme with favorite foods (Sam-Ham)

Wear Green

Make Egg Carton Creatures

Printables from Early Moments

Egg Spinning activity (one hardboiled and one fresh)

Upper/Lower case egg matching Game by Making Learning Fun

Horton Hears A Who

Make Cotton Candy Snack

Cut out elephant ears and attach to headband to be elephants; now walk like an elephant.

Have a sound activity.  Listen to different sounds through earmuffs, earplugs, etc.

Try to make as much noise as you all can.  What works best, pots and pans, instruments, or our voices?

Talk to your children about the meaning of, “a person’s a person no matter how small.”

Talk to your children about how each of us can make a difference.

Printables from Early Moments

Watch the Movie

Hop on Pop

Jump on bubble wrap (get it? hop on pop! ha ha)

Jump on a trampoline (or bed if you have one you will allow this), or just jump in different ways (hop on one foot, hop over things, jump high, jump far, etc).

Play with bubbles (pop)

Say words and every time the kids come up with a rhyme they get to pop a balloon.

Read the page about Mr. Brown and Mr. Black, then eat brown and black snacks (pretzels half dipped in chocolate, wheat bread with blackberry jam, graham crackers and chocolate frosting).

Hide pictures of puppies around the house.  Give each child a cup and they are to find as many pups as they can and put them in their cup (references to pup in cup in this book).

Watch this video of the book from game equarium.

Yertle the Turtle

Wear Green

Wear backpacks while crawling a preset path.

Make turtles out of a bowl you paint green and green paper for head, arms, legs and tail.

Make turtles out of a smooth round rock.

Have turtle races:  Tie shoes together with laces as long as you can.  Then kids can only take small steps during race.

See how many cups your children can stack without them falling over (or blocks, or whatever).

The Cat in the Hat

Juggle with different items; balls, blocks, fruit, etc.

Printables from Early Moments

Printables from PBS kids

Watch the Movie

Watch The Cat in the Hat marathon on pbs

Make Hat snacks with 3 red gummy lifesavers and a ritz cracker

Have a hat that you put items that rhyme into (mat-cat, mouse-house…obviously these would be my children’s toys as no house would fit in a hat).

Thing 1 and Thing 2 Pencils have been on my list since I first saw them at Skip To My Lou!!

Kraft Jr has these amazing Seuss Puppets.  Super easy, too!

Bartholomew and the Oobleck

Make Oobleck (slime)

Experiment with the Oobleck

The point of this list is to see how easy it is to come up with activities to go along with which ever Dr. Seuss books that you have! 

Monday I had asked for links to what other people are doing.  Here they are:

Please feel free to keep adding to my Dr. Seuss linky to share what you have done/are doing for this fun week!

Rebecca

Crayon Scratch and Sketching

My daughter has this awesome book.  She drew the toucan on the right.  We have so much fun with these kinds of books and papers.

This is the book that she has.  Such a great book!  It reminded me of how we used to make our own crayon scratch paper.

So we made some of our own.  We colored lots of colors on a white piece of paper.

Then, cover the colored crayons with a hard/dark layer of black crayon.  Then, scratch off the black layer using a scratching tool. 

I used a paper clip, embossing tool, and the wooden tool that came with my daughter’s book.  I’d have to say that the thicker the end of the tool, the better.  A plastic or wood would probably be best, as well.

 

The kids had fun, but I wanted a better layer of crayon on top so I did an experiment.

I colored up a new paper with some square swatches.

Then, I melted some crayons in a metal tin.  At first I melted them in the oven and then tried painting with them.  They cooled way too fast this way.  So, I brought out a large skillet and put it on the stove.  I left it on low to keep the crayons melted.  You can see that I painted with QTips.  I would imagine the crayon would ruin any paint brushes.

I tried different color layers then just black, too!

This technique does kind of work.  Really you could just omit the colored layer beneath because the top layer of crayon melted the bottom layer.  I was worried about that happening, and it did.  Also, you really want your crayon liquid kind of hot to be able to put a thinner layer of crayon on top.  Some of my squares were too thick and then it was hard to scratch into.

 

So I’m not satisfied with the results.  It worked if you didn’t want color underneath.  I’m thinking that doing this on scrapbook paper might work better because then there would automatically be color underneath that wouldn’t melt into the top layer.

 

It was fun, nonetheless!

 

Does anyone have any ideas?  I’d love to be able to make my own that looks closer to the kind of paper you can buy at the store.

 

Thanks,

Rebecca

Eggshell Christmas Craft-Holly

Usually my eggshells go straight into my compost.  But this is a fun way to reuse them as well!

 

I love the great number of Christmas pictures that you can download free off of the internet.  I like to try and have the kids decorate them differently each time.  We’ve colored (with markers, pencils, crayons, etc) painted, melted crayon, glued yarn on, used tissue paper, etc. 

I thought I’d try something new this time.  So I boiled some eggshells (that I cleaned out) with green food coloring and some in red food coloring.  I used lots of dye because I wanted red, not pink! 

Here are some of our colored eggshell masterpieces.  This was really fun for the kids because they got to smash up their own eggshells.  We just covered the pictures with glue and then sprinkled the eggshells on top.  We did the red berry first, then the green leaves.

 

Rebecca

Candy Cane Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer

A great quick and easy craft to do with the kids!  Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer Candy Cane!  I only used what we had on hand even!  Gotta love that!  These will be adorning our gifts to friends and family this year.  Love them, especially because I remember making them as a kid, too!

I’m sure no tutorial is necessary but here are the parts needed.  We hot glued on the eyes and nose.  I put the hot glue on the eyes and nose and then they put them onto the candy cane.  I feel like my plate is looking at me!

Fun note is that my Son made these in school last year.  So he taught us all how to make them this year.  I loved how he explained it!

My kids made all of these and I think they all turned out great!

I especially love the wonky eyes!  Gives them more character, I think!

Rebecca
What are your favorite quick and easy Christmas Crafts?  Or what are the Christmas crafts that you remember making in your childhood?

Shrinky Dink Ornaments or Charms

Aren’t these the cutest little charms or ornaments?  I had been in a paper crafting mood.  However, many of my paper crafts just do not last from year to year.  So, I made these to last!  They are made from that shrinky dink material.  I love how brightly colored these end up being! 

I used these as charms on my cookie exchange packages, charms for a bracelet, package toppers, and ornaments for a mini tree!

I made these by printing up a page of Christmas shapes.  I layered a clear shrinky dink page on top and traced and colored away!  Cut out and be sure to remember to punch a hole in them before you bake them!
You can see a post I did with these that turned them into charms on a Christmas bracelet!
Rebecca

I'm joining the fun at this party! StephanieLynn,

Fun Finger Painting For Thanksgiving

I have always loved children’s fingerprints.  I am even in the midst of making up a whole alphabet book of animals that we turn our fingerprints into. 

So, today we had some fun using our fingerprints and handprints to make turkeys and trees.

I saw these adorable turkeys over at my new favorite site, Silly Eagle Books.  You must check her out!  My version is a little different than hers, and years ago I made these with rows of feathers.  A row of red feathers, then orange, then yellow, and then the body.  Fun!

How sweet are little hands!? 

We put our turkeys along the bottom of a page so they could draw and color the scene in themselves.  Sorry about the lighting, just imagine that you could see their cute eyes and beaks!  I couldn’t get the picture’s lighting right to make them show up!  I guess for blogging, a lighter color of brown would be better!

Then we went all out and painted up our hands and arms to make trees! 

This time our fingerprints were the autumn leaves.

I like how both of these activities turned out and the kids ALWAYS love when we paint!

Had to throw this in.  Do you see the orange face?  This is what my kids were doing as they ate their snack after school today.  I just love having them home and can’t wait for our 4 day weekend to begin!!

Rebecca

Autumn Envy-Preschool Theme on Leaves

I live in Phoenix…the leaves don’t change colors here.  It is interesting teaching preschool aged children, from Phoenix, about the seasons, because we don’t see all 4 seasons.  But this has been a fun week learning all about leaves!

I like to start November with this theme because then I have a bulletin board that we add things we are thankful for, on leaves, to a tree!

Clothespin Matching-I have clothespins with the whole alphabet on one side and then numbers on the other side, so that we can use them either way!  Get a stack of shapes to fit your theme (I made leaves in autumn colors).  Print the alphabet on one side and numbers on the back side.

These leaves can be used to match the leaf to the clothespin, to sort by colors, spell out words, sort other object by number on top of the leaves, graph how many of each color, make patterns, etc.   

Leaf Tracing-I printed up a few leaves.  Have the kids work on the carpet with a tack (obviously watch them carefully with the tacks).  They poke holes along the outline of the leaf.  For some reason kids seem to LOVE this activity.  You can also let them poke holes with needles, pencils, etc.

Rainbow Tracing is using another leaf outline and having the children trace over the line, using each color in the rainbow.  Kids also seem to love this.

Leaf Collages-You can vary this depending on the age of the child.  This time I gave each child one strip of red, orange, and yellow paper.  Then, they tore these strips into piles of tiny paper pieces.  I used tissue paper last year.  You can also do this as a scissors activity.  Have thinner strips of colored paper for the children to cut into smaller pieces.  This is a great way to get children use to scissors.

Have them put glue all over just the leaf shape.  Then, they can add the pieces however they like them. 

Leaf Rubbings-On our daily walk we collected leaves.  Even I was surprised at the variety of leaf shapes we found!  These were all from just my yard!  We even used citrus, strawberry, and tomato leaves!  I wish my zuchini and pumpkins had grown because those huge leaves would have been phenomenal to use for this activity and lots of others!

I think you all know how to make leaf rubbings with the side of crayons.  So easy for the kids to get great results.  I do tape the paper down to the table to help it stay in place.  

How about this leaf rubbing?

It is from a leaf skeleton that we made (which I will show you how to do next week) and tin foil.  I absolutely LOVE this and think we might end up framing some of these!

Eating Leaves-We ate foods that we cut out in leaf shapes (like pastries, sandwiches, cookies, etc.  We also ate caprese salad that we picked the basil leaves from my garden for!  As we cooked lunch this week we used herbs that we picked from my herb garden, to season our foods.  We also ate lettuce and spinach and I explained how those are leaves that we are eating.

Plant Pressing-We also gathered extra leaves and some flowers as well and are pressing them.  We have more activities that we made and are making, with the pressed plants.  I will show you those next week when we are all done with them.

If my zucchini plants had grown we would have made zucchini horns again, out of the leaves!   

It has been a fun week learning all about autumn, the seasons, leaves, and plants.  Many interesting topics come up when talking about leaves.  We talked about how we eat leaves like lettuce, spinach, and herbs.  We also saw how in the garden bugs also ate the leaves of the plants in our garden.  We talked about how some leaves provide shade for us, animals, and other plants.  We dissected some leaves and got them down to their skeleton to see the inner workings of leaves.

What leaf activities have you done?

Rebecca

Halloween Manipulative-Halloween Bean

Here is one of my fun Halloween activities for the kids.  Aren’t those cute Pumpkins and Ghosts?  They are just painted beans!  Then, use a sharpie to make the faces!

I actually got this activity from a garage sale from a teacher.  I'm not sure what kind of paint was used on these beans, but it's very shiny!  I'm going to guess it was spray paint.  I've had a few people tell me that they have used that on Pinto beans, and that's what looks like is going on here!  Thanks to everyone for helping us figure this out! ;)  I can see lots more of these for the future (Green christmas trees, or maybe as ornaments?).

You can use them as is for sorting, patterning, counting, etc!!

Or you can add a fun picture for extra fun and activities.  This is just a basic shape out of felt!
 
Aren’t those hands the cutest?  I do this with kids as young as 18 months (just watch them to not put them in their mouths!) 

Rebecca
We are joining the following parties; ABC and 123,

A Bushel of Apples to Play With

 
I loved my Mom’s crocheted apples so much that I had to make up some polymer clay ones!

These were so quick and easy to make.  Then, I let my kids play with them!

After I made my tiny apples, I made up this paper to use them with. 
I keep adding to my list of manipulatives for my children to play with.  There are so many ways for the kids to play with these.  They can sort them by color, do pattern work, use the above sheet and sort by numbers, etc.  I love this kind of stuff!
Rebecca

I'm joining the following fun parties; Its A Blog Party, Blue Cricket Design, Sew Much Ado, Just A Girl, ABC and 123,