By Angel L. Avery-Wright
“Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?”
“Would you like them with a fox?”
“Go, Dog, Go!”
How many Dr. Seuss books can you remember being read to you or by you? Children have been learning to rhyme and read from Dr.Seuss books since 1957 when Houghton Mifflin and Random House asked Dr. Seuss to write a children’s primer using 220 vocabulary words. The book was called “Cat in the Hat” and was one of many children’s books that Dr. Seuss would write. Sixteen of those books would make it onto the 100 Top Selling Hardcover Children’s Books of all times list.
Every year, on March 2nd, Dr. Seuss’s birthday is celebrated through Read Across America Day where everyone is encouraged to pick up a book and read. Many children are also taught about some of the 44 books that Dr. Seuss wrote.
Additional activities surrounding Dr. Seuss celebrations include rhyming activities, art projects, dramatic play props and food creations. Would you eat green eggs and ham? Why not try serving it for lunch and see what happens? Children can graph who liked it and who didn’t. Adding blue and red fish to snack includes a reference to another one of Seuss’s books, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.”
Creating paper plate masks with the Lorax’s mustache or Thing 1’s blue hair is an easy way to add Dr. Seuss to your dramatic play area. Red and white striped hats or socks can brighten your Whacky Wednesday.
“Oh, the Places You’ll Go” is an opportunity to have children share what places they would like to visit. The children at Lehigh Children’s Academy made Paper Mache air balloons and attached photos of themselves to show where they were going. They also decorated the hallways with ‘truffula trees” made from tissue paper. Truffula trees can be made using straws and pompoms as well. There are so many creative ways to add art projects to a Dr. Seuss week at your program.
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!
