1-2-3 Come Do Some Lorax and Mustache Activities With Me

I'm clueless, as to why the mustache theme started in the first place, and continues to be so popular.  However, I'm a firm believer in using what's a "hot button" for children to help grab their attention and then engage them in learning.

Since the Lorax sports a wonderful big-yellow fluffy mustache, I designed some activities featuring this colorful creature.  Today's blog features some of my most popular Lorax-themed downloads.

Making a mustache/moustache to launch a writing prompt, is an interesting and "Suessical" way of doing things, that I think your students will enjoy. Make a sample, cover your nose, and ask your students in a deep voice: "I mustache you, would you save a Truffula tree?"  Thus begins the fun writing prompt "craftivity."

While children are working, you can play the "Let It Grow" song from the Lorax movie.  Click the link for the Lorax YouTube song video.

For an adorable bulletin board, take everyone's photograph wearing their mustache and put it next to their writing.   Flank the board on either side with 2 colorful truffula trees.

Mrs. Lodge, a very creative librarian, used PVC pipe to make some beautiful truffula tree trunks. 

You can also make the truffula trunks out of pool noodles and then stripe with colorful Duct tape.  I especially like these green and blue ones that EmBellish made for her 1st grade classsroom.

While you're "truffulling" why not whip together some truffula pencils. 

Writing about saving a truffula tree, with a truffula pencil will certainly add to the fun.

These were made by Jin Yong. Click on the link to get directions over at Under The Cherry Tree Blog.

Since the Silly Shaped Penguins, Owls, and Chicks have been such a huge hit, I designed some featuring the Lorax.    His easily recognizable, bright-orange oval-ish shape and yellow mustache, is perfect for other shapes too.

For an interesting and fun shape review during Seuss Week or March is Reading Month, make a set and use them as anchor charts or big flashcards.

Toss in some math, by graphing everyone's favorite shaped Lorax. Simply hang your Lorax samples in a row on the white board. 

Have students write their  name under the one that they like best, or have students choose their favorite shape and make their own. 

If you want to add a bit of keepsake-value to their shape, have children use their hand prints for the mustache.  Add wiggle eyes, and accordion-folded, construction paper arms and legs. 

Suspend the Lorax shapes back-to-back from the ceiling, or mount them on a bulletin board flanked by truffula trees. Your caption could be: "Reading Really Gets Us In Shape!"

To introduce the emergent reader shape booklet, also in the packet, tell students that the Lorax ate some leaves from the truffula tree and has Truffula-itis, which made him lose his normal shape. 

They can help him return to the real Lorax oval shape, by completing their Shapely Lorax emergent reader, circling the capital letters, adding end punctuation, tracing and writing the shape word, and then tracing and drawing the shapes etc. 

Click on the link to view/print the Lorax Shape Packet.

Finally, I used the Lorax's face to make a clock, and the truffula trees to show digital time.  There are 2 different games in the "It's Truffula Time" packet.

In the first game, students play in groups of 2-4, taking turns spinning the Lorax clock.  Whatever analog time they land on, they trace the digital time on their truffula tree trunk. 

Students can also use the Lorax spinner clock, to write numbers on their mini-clock recording sheet.

For this game, they can substitute dice for a spinner, rolling first 1 die for clock times 1-6, then adding two dice for the rest of the times to the hour.

Run the trufulla tree tops on colored copy paper and have students cut and glue their tree top to their digital answer sheet. Click on the link to view/download the Lorax Truffula Telling Time packet.

Well that's it for today.  Thanks for visiting.  Our week of Seuss is almost over, so it's time to start working on some activities for St. Patrick's Day. Wishing you a colorful and creative day.

"I like nonsense.  It wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient to living." -Dr. Seuss

1-2-3 Come Do "Sum" Seuss Math Activities With Me

I'm sure most of us use Dr. Seuss for lots of reading and writing activities, but you can also toss in some math as well.  Here's how...

"I see, he sees, we see, she sees, they see, everyone sees the number ___________." Says the Cat in the Hat. Try saying that tongue-twisting, pronoun-filled sentence fast!  It's an interesting way to introduce this quick, easy and fun Seuss-hat worksheet, which covers a variety of math standards.

Teachers can choose a number, give students a choice or make it a game, and have children roll dice to figure out what number they will use to fill out their worksheet. To create higher numbers for older students, add more dice.

You can also toss the Cat in the Hat number cards into a Seuss hat or other container,  and have children pick one. (The numbers go from 0-120!)

Interest remains high, even though you can use the worksheet for an entire week or all of March, because the number changes daily. 

Students look forward to working on their Cat Hat Math Mat, because they know what to do, which empowers them. 

They can get right down to business, without waiting for directions, which is a real time saver for teachers too.

I've provided a large template to use to explain and demonstrate what you want your kiddos to do, as well as a large completed sample that you can laminate & hang up as an anchor chart poster, to help remind young children of the directions.

For students, there's a smaller version, with two-on-a-page, to conserve paper. 

The beauty of this worksheet, is that you can use it for any number.  Younger students can work on numbers less than 10, older students can work with two and three-digit numbers. The worksheet is also an easy way to whole-group assess.

Laminate several templates and set them up as an independent math center.  Students use dry erase markers to fill in the number of the day. 

The Cat Hat Math Mat packet also includes a helpful Cat in the Hat bookmark with math symbols.

 I've also designed another Cat's hat math worksheet for younger children.  Here, students trace and write the numbers and number words.

They X-off that many boxes in the 10 frame, count and color the correct amount of dots in the group/set, circle the number in the sequence, then tally that many marks. 

For more practice, have students write one or two sentences on the back of their worksheet, using that number. 

The packet includes a completed hat to help explain things, then hang up as an anchor chart, so kiddos can refer to it.  Click on the link for the Cat in the Hat Number Sense packet. 

To see this past-week's Seuss-themed blog articles, simply scroll down.  If you'd like to take a look at all of the Dr. Seuss FREEBIES on my site, click on the link to pop on over to that section.  I also have an entire board of Seuss ideas, and free activities on my Pinterest board. 

Thanks for visiting.  I can't believe it's March 1st today! Did the new month sort of sneak up on you too? 

Even though I'm happy to see the record-breaking-cold February gone, I still have lots of Seuss-themed activities on my "To Do" list. 

Hopefully, there are other teachers and homeschoolers that celebrate Seuss for the entire month, or at least a week, as I'll be posting a few more goodies!

 "Don't give up.  I believe in you all.  A person's a person no matter how small!"  -Dr. Seuss  from Horton Hears A Who

10 pages.

I wondered how many books Dr. Seuss had written, so I Googled it.  There were guess-timates from 40 to 60 books; because of the discrepancies, I decided to make my own list, so I could count and know the answer.   I came up with 65 (2 were for adults).  I hope you find this alphabetical list, with some interesting notations, helpful.

8 pages

After reading Dr. Seuss's book, What Was I Scared Of?  (Also found in The Sneetches) discuss what kinds of things people are afraid of and how they can overcome their fears. 

11 pages.

You can do this as a whole group activity and jot down UP phrases as your students think of them, making one poster, or use this as an interesting activity for your Daily 5 word work and have students each make up their own. 

1-2-3 Come Review Vowels With The Cat and the Hat and Me

As you add vocabulary words to your word wall, it's a good idea to continue to reinforce vowel sounds with your students.  With this in mind, I thought it would be fun to do something with a Seuss theme to review vowels.   The Cat in the Hat seemed like the perfect helper. 

Using the sweet clip art of myclipartstore.com,  I designed Seuss's tall cat to represent long vowels, and then made a shorter cat for the short vowels. 

There's a template with all of the vowels on one page, (upper and lowercase versions) as well as patterns with all of the cats showing one letter.  This way you can choose to work on one vowel at a time, or all five, picking your pattern accordingly. 

Run the cats off, trim and then glue them to the appropriate short and long vowel boxes.  I used turquoise paper for the long vowels, and yellow paper for the short vowels.  Glue them together, laminate, trim and attach to a Popsicle stick with glue dots.  

To easily sort and differentiate, use a different colored Popsicle stick for each vowel group. (For example, all of the A's are on red sticks, the E's on yellow etc.) 

I've included a comprehensive list of words for all of the long vowels, as well as a list for all of the short vowels.  I drew from elementary word wall lists, as well as the Dolch lists (PK-3rd) so that you have a nice variety to choose from.

Pass out whatever vowel cat paddles that you want to work on, call out a word from your list, and have students flip and hold up their cat paddle with the answer.  You can see at a glance who is having difficulty. 

If you want to cover all of the vowels at the same time, only the students with that vowel cat hold up their stick.  Click on the link to view/download the Vowel Cat in the Hat Paddles packet. 

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.  I have an entire Dr. Seuss board on Pinterest.  Click on the link to pop on over.  

To see more Dr. Seuss articles, packed with FREEBIES, simple scroll down.   

"Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. " -Dr. Seuss

20 pages

Use these Cat in the Hat Popsicle stick paddles to practice long and short vowels.  Inlcudes a list of words for all of the long vowels, and a list of words for all of the short vowels, which includes many words from the Dolch word lists. (PK-3rd).

10 pages.

After reading Dr. Seuss's If I Ran The Circus, have students transition to either of these interesting writing prompts.  One is a class book.  Choose which writing prompt you want your students to do.  They complete their page and illustrate it.  Collect and collate the pages.  Read your class book aloud by having each student share the page that they wrote.

5 pages.

This is a take off of Dr. Seuss's book On Beyond Zebra, which is about all of the letters that come after Z. In the beginning of the story, Cornelius is bragging that he knows all of the letters from A to Z.  He's shocked to find out that there are more!

1-2-3 Come Do S'more Seuss Activities With Me

To help get the wiggles out after story hour, we sang songs.  Singing lightened up the day and taught a variety of skills. 

With that in mind, I thought other teachers might be doing the same thing and looking for something with a Seuss theme, so I used the tune to B-I-N-G-O and substituted the letters with Seuss. 

I've included letter cards, so that you can put them on your flannel or white board and then take one down as you sing each verse. (This is also a teachable moment for subtraction.)

As I was singing, to make sure of the beat, my husband walked in and started singing a goofy little ditty to the tune of Brother John, so of course I had that song stuck in my head and wrote a second Seuss song.   Click on the link to view/download Some Seuss Songs.

I'm working on a list of characters and nonsense words in each book, (a massive under taking, so who knows when I'll finish!) To do so, I'm slowly reading all of the Seuss books that I have in my vast collection (almost 50). 

Since I'm always multi-tasking, I jotted down writing prompts that popped into my head while reading.  Here are a few that I've finished.  These make wonderful class books, and there's more to come, so stay tuned!

First, hot off the press, is a class book entitled: Feature Creatures Plus One Teacher.

This is a different way to have students practice the alphabet, along with their writing skills, and is an interesting transition after you read Dr. Seuss's Alphabet book.  

Make a copy of the letter tiles; toss them into a Seuss hat and have students  pick a letter card and glue it to their page.

Children write their upper and lowercase letter on the blank and then think up a creature that starts with that letter, afterwards drawing a picture underneath.  This should NOT be a real creature like Zz is for Zebra. 

Students need to use their imagination and think up a silly creature just like Dr. Seuss does: "Ff Four fluffy feathers on a fiffer-feffer-feff." Pre-K kids can stop there, but encourage older students to write a few sentences. 

Challenge them to use rhyming words, as well as some tongue-twisting alliteration, to make things more “Seussical."

For example, Zz is for a Zigglewag who likes to play wiggle tag.  He eats zinnias, zingles and zag, all of which make me personally gag.  or Bb is for Boomtoot, who's from Bangladoot and likes to eat fruit, especially bapples, belon and bloot.  

I've included Suess-font letter cards, student and teacher writing pages, plus a sample.  Click on the link to view/download the Feature Creatures Plus One Teacher class book.

Another Alphabet book I think your students will enjoy making is On Before Ant. This is a take off of Dr. Seuss's book On Beyond Zebra, which is about all of the letters that come after  Z. In the beginning of the story, Cornelius is bragging that he knows all of the letters from A to Z. 

He's shocked to find out that there are more!   "Then he almost fell flat on his face on the floor, when I picked up some chalk and drew one letter more. A letter he never had dreamed of before..."  like the letter Snee, which is for "...sneedle, a terrible kind of ferocious mos-keedle.  Whose hum-dinger stinger is as sharp as a needle. "

All of these goofy letters have a name and symbol.   I thought it would be fun to make a class book of all of the pretend letters that might possibly come before the letter A. 

Run off copies of the inside page and have students think up a letter, design it, and then give an example of something that starts with that letter,  finishing up with an illustration. 

After students share their work, collect the pages, collate and make into a class book. Click on the link to view/download the On Before Ant class book. 

Finally, another fun writing prompt has to do with Seuss's book If I Ran The Circus.

The packet includes a class book with two writing prompts to choose from, as well as a 3D cylinder "craftivity."

Students color and cut out their circus tent and then attach their completed writing prompt paper to either side, so that they can bend it into a cylinder shape. 

The photo shows the various views of a completed project.  Punch holes on either side, add a yarn loop and suspend from the ceiling.

For that finishing touch, children add a toothpick flag, and then choose either a clown or a ringmaster to color and glue their photo on top of that face. 

They glue "themselves" to the inside of the tent, so it looks like they are peeking out of the door flap.  Click on the link to view/download the If I Ran The Circus Writing Craftivity packet. 

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.  For another cute Seuss writing prompt, scroll down and you'll find a 3D balloon "craftivity" perfect for Seuss's book Oh The Places You'll Go.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better.  It's not!" -Dr. Seuss