1-2-3 Come Do Some Cat in the Hat Craftivities With Me 

Seuss's birthday is on March 2nd, so my school kicks off our March is Reading Month with a super-fun Cat in the Hat Day. 

With that in mind, I designed a plethora of Seuss hat-themed activities.  Here are 3 of my kiddos' all-time favorites.  

First up  is a place value  “Cat in the Hat” game. I print and laminate a class set so that we can play a whole-group place value game.

Students take turns calling out a 2 or 3-digit number.  Using a dry erase marker, students write the number on the hat brim and then place that many number tiles in the appropriate columns.

This is also a quick and simple way to whole-group assess. When students have filled in their mat, they raise their hand. You can see at a glance who is having difficulty.

The hat and number tiles come in a large, full-page size, as well as a smaller, 2-on-a-page pattern to conserve paper.

I’ve also included a 3D “Cat in the Hat” place value craftivity, that makes an interesting manipulative for an independent center, assessing, or playing a game with a partner.    

Next up is a quick, easy and super-fun, Cat's Hat AT Word Family packet, filled with a variety of interesting activities to help practice the at family of words.

The packet includes:

* An at word family poster.
* A “My Cat Pat” emergent reader flip booklet with a full-color teacher’s edition.
* A set of “Pat the Cat” pocket chart cards

*An at family, “Cat in the Hat” slider craftivity, featuring 16 words.
*4 worksheets.

* A “My Itty Bitty Book Of at Family Words” booklet.

* Picture and word cards to use as an independent center.

* You can also use the cards for a Memory Match or “I Have; Who Has?” game. 
* I've also included black and white “Trace, Write & Color” puzzle cards, with a matching set in full color for a center activity. 

Finally, the next cat hat craftivity is very versatile, as the "Classmate Hat" can be used as a game, independent center, whole group activity, bulletin board, writing prompt or reading log.

There are "brim" options for preschool to 2nd grade, as well as several generic ones to fit whatever.

Besides the “Alphabetize Your Classmates” game, the packet also includes a mini cat hat craftivity, with a variety of brim options for that too.

Students choose to put their hat on a cat pattern, an enlarged photo of themselves, or they can pick a head pattern and draw a face on it.

I’ve included 9 faceless head templates they can pick from, as I find this helps little ones with size, however you can always opt to have children draw their own.

Students color, trim and glue their hat on top of their head.  Completed projects make an adorable bulletin board.

I've included a worksheet for alphabetizing practice, plus a "Speed" game challenge, recording sheet.

Since the hat templates are blank, you can also have students write a list of their favorite Seuss books. Older students can put their list in alphabetical order.

Another idea is to “Stack a Hat” using the stripes as a reading log to jot down each book they read during March is Reading Month or the number of pages they’ve read each week.

You can also use the blank hat for a writing prompt of your choice, or have students list the reasons why they like to read, or specifically why they enjoy reading Dr. Seuss books. 

Patterns come on a full-page, as well as a smaller, 2-on-a-page size, to save on paper. 

The FREEBIE today also features Seuss. It's a set of silly Dr. Seuss songs that I made up.  I hope you find them useful. 

Well that's it for today.  Thanks for stopping by.  As much as I've up-dated, tweaked and designed, I still have a huge "to do" pile sitting on my desk. 

So I'm certainly happy that March has 31 days in it, providing more time to cram in some extra-fun spring themes.  Wishing you a sunshine-filled day.

"The beautiful spring came; and when nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also." -Harriet Ann Jacobs

5 pages.

Practice a variety of word work with The Very Hungry Wordapillar.  I've included patterns, an at word family sample, plus a list of ideas of word categories to make caterpillars for.  Children can design their own caterpillar head, color my template, or simply add wiggle eyes and a smile to a colorful circle of construction paper.

34 pages.

Review all sorts of standards with this quick, easy and fun Seuss-themed Cat in the Hat game.  Print, laminate and trim the "food" cards.  These are mini cards that include upper and lowercase letters, numbers from 0-120, 11 number word cards,  twelve 2D shape cards, twelve 3D shape cards, 35 contraction cards, 20 at family cards, and 11 color word cards. 

1-2-3 Come Do Some More Cat In The Hat Activities With Me

I love the hat that Dr. Seuss created for his cat.  It's the perfect vehicle for all sorts of interesting activities.  I've designed a few more for today's article that cover a variety of standards.  I hope you enjoy them. 

I've had a few requests for more place value items, so I designed the Cat Hat Place Value Mat activity.  After running off the hat template, you can make it more durable and add some red to the hat,  by gluing it on a sheet of red construction paper, then trim and laminate.

Run off the number tiles on Seuss colors like red, yellow and turquoise.  Each number needs its own color.  Laminate and trim. 

I would do this as a whole group activity, so every student needs 10 of each of the 3 kinds of number tiles.   Store the set of 30 tiles in a Ziplock snack Baggie and make a class set.  By having 10 of each in the Baggie, you’ll have extras incase students lose one.

Have students take turns calling out 3-digit numbers.  Using a dry erase marker, children write that number on the hat brim and then put the correct number of tiles in the appropriate columns.  This is a quick, easy and fun way to whole group assess.

The packet also includes a certificate of praise.  Click on the link to view/download the Cat Hat Place Value Mat

For more math fun with the cat's hat, I designed a How many ways can you show a number, Popsicle stick activity.  There are several ways to use the Seuss Hat for different number games. 

Students can put the "How many ways can I show the number ______." hat brim strip, on their hat and then place all of the Popsicle stick equations, that make that number, on their Seuss hat.

Children place the Popsicle sticks on the hat in such a way, that they look like an ABAB striped pattern.

Students can show addition and subtraction as pictured, or to expedite things, just addition OR subtraction equations.

This is an easy and fun way to whole group assess a variety of concepts. 

I've included number tiles from 0-120 with a blank sheet for you to program with even higher numbers.  I've also included pages so students can work on fact families.

Besides using the hat for math, I made a few hat activities for language arts.  The Cat Hat AT family slider, is a fun way for students to see the various AT family words that they can make by pulling on the "slider."   Click on the link to view/download the Cat Hat AT slider craftivity.

I will read... is a hat bookmark that can be used as a writing prompt.  Share my example with your students and challenge them to write verses of their own. 

I've alluded to a variety of Seuss books in my poem. "I will read with Mr. Brown; I will read upside down.  I will read with duck feet; I will read because it's neat."

Challenge your students to figure out which books I've used.   Click on the link to view/download the I Can Read Dr. Seuss bookmark-writing prompt.

After reading The Cat in the Hat, review story elements with this Cat in the Hat language arts packet.

The packet includes pocket cards, a beginning-middle-end graphic organzizer, plus sentence strips to sequence the story. 

Students arrange the sentences in the correct order and glue them to their hat. 

Click on the link to view/download the Cat in the Hat story elements packet. 

Finally, because the punctuation pocket cards have been so popular, I decided to tweak this idea, and make the "cards" into stripes for the cat's hat. 

Run off the cat hat template on red construction paper. 

Run off the sentence strips on white copy paper.   Students underline the letters that need to be capitalized and add punctuation.  They cut their stripes and glue them to their hat in an ABAB pattern, leaving room so that the hat will look like it has alternating red and white stripes. 

If you want, have students re-write the corrected sentences on the red stripes.  So that each students' hat could be different, I made up 108 sentences from a variety of Dr. Seuss stories. 

Completed projects make a nice bulletin board.  A caption could be: "Hammer, slammer, whammer; ___________'s class really knows their grammar!"  Click on the link to view/download the Cat's Hat Grammar "craftivity" packet.

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.  To view more Seuss activities, scroll down for other articles and more Dr. Seuss FREEBIES.

"I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells." -Dr. Seuss