Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

As most of you know, I just love Dr. Seuss's birthday. What a fun excuse to have a good time reading!

To celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday we had a fun activity each day with a favorite Dr. Seuss book to go along with it. 

On Monday we read The Cat in the Hat Comes Back and all of the children got to wear their favorite hat to school. 

Tuesday we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck.. What is Oobleck you ask?? Well, it is a gooey, icky, sticky green substance that covers the whole kingdom!

Or a non-Newtonian substance that has both characteristics of solids and liquids. 

Whichever. :)

We read the story, which has a great moral. The king is not very nice and he is very prideful and can only save his kingdom by admitting his guilt in the situation and apologizing. 

Afterwards, we made our own Oobleck. 

Want to make some at home? Here's what you need!

First, add a few drops of green food coloring to your water if you want authentic Seuss Oobleck. You can use any color that you'd like. Then add one cup of cornstarch and one cup of water in a large mixing bowl. 

Next, stir and stir and stir and stir and stir. Adding cornstarch and water as necessary until it is almost impossible to stir anymore!

 Finally, dig in and enjoy playing with this crazy stuff!

After we made our Oobleck and experimented with it a little bit, we discussed whether or not it was a solid or a liquid. Many of the children seemed to think it was both. When I asked them why they explained that you can pour it like a liquid, but you can make it into a ball like a solid. It will mold to the shape of its container like a liquid, but then feels hard to the touch like a solid. What smart Oobleck scientists!

Wednesday's fun book was The Lorax. We read the story and then we talked about what the word "Unless" really means. We all wore green and talked about ways that we can help keep our Earth from meeting the same fate as the Truffula Trees. 

Then we made our own Truffula trees to help us remember. 

Thursday we read one of my absolute favorite Dr. Seuss stories, I Wish That I Had Duck Feet. The children were allowed to dress up in animal clothing of their choice. Don't they look adorable?!

We also did a fun writing activity. The children had to choose which animal body part they would like to have, what would be good or fun about it, and what would be the downside of having it. They modeled the style of the story and did a fantastic job writing about which animal parts they would like to have!

We ended up missing our PJ day on Friday because of snow, but when we got back on Monday we read 

I Am Not Getting Out of Bed Today. 

We had so much fun reading these fun stories and interacting with the text!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!