For our last official day of Dr. Seuss week, we read Yertle the Turtle and used a fun idea from Strong Start when we played with these egg carton stacking turtles.
We also had fun painting some of our own turtles!
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Today we have read The Foot Book, I Wish that I Had Duck Feet, and Fox in Socks and carried the theme into our play with our Silly Sock Day, and then painting with our feet! It really was a lot of fun, a great sensory experience, and great large motor workout too, since walking on a paper that gets more and more saturated with paint can get very slippery! 
Some of the littlest ones got in on the fun, too! Even though we waited to do the majority of our feet painting until they were napping, they each got to have a turn exploring the paint on their own. Such a new, fun texture, and repeating the cause and effect relationship of dipping and then smearing was definitely a highlight! 
It is day 3 of celebrating Read Across America and Dr. Seuss's birthday. This morning we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck, and then of course we had to follow that up by making some Oobleck! If you've never made Oobleck (cornstarch & water) before, there is a great explanation and demonstration of it by Scientific American here. Oobleck is so much fun because it has properties of both a solid and a liquid at the same time. When you apply pressure, it gets firm and when you relax, it runs through your fingers. I can't keep my own fingers out of it, and the kids love it, too! :)  Today was also our "Green Eggs & Ham Day!" This year the kids ALL ate their Green Eggs & Ham (at least most of it!) and they enjoyed hearing the story as they ate! After trying their meal, they were quick to offer advice to the book's character...."He should just try it!" "They are good, he will like them!" They are so wise. ;)  It's Read Across America Week and we are having a blast celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! Today we read the Lorax and then "drip-dyed" some Truffula tree-tops! The pipettes we used are one of my favorite fine-motor tools, great for exercising those little hands, and great for hand-eye coordination, too. You should have seen their little faces concentrating! The kids also enjoyed mixing lots of new colors for their beautiful creations. They may take all week to dry, but we sure had fun!!  We carried that fun into snack time by making our own edible Truffula Trees (pretzel sticks and mini colored marshmallows) and having some Brown Barbaloot Bears, too!  This week marks the annual celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America Week! It is a time I always look forward to, since it is filled with so many fun activities and so much fun reading! So far, we have enjoyed a Cat In The Hat beanbag toss game, lots of red and white patterning, some Red Fish Blue Fish decorating, and a fun lunch of "Lorax pasta" complete with a blue Humming Fish "river" alfredo sauce, broccoli and asparagus "trees," and mini Lorax (pineapple) "mustaches." A fun start to a great week! 
We had so much fun last week celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! For the past couple of years, I think it has been the favorite "holiday" around here! This year I brought out some old favorites (like painting with our feet, and then reading the Foot Book) as well as some new activities, art projects, and fun foods. The kids had fun using tissue paper scraps to fill in their Red fish & Blue fish, and loved dipping cotton balls into colored water to make colorful Truffula tree-tops!  In addition to the fun art projects, we enjoyed some great Dr. Seuss themed games and activities, too. The kids did some impressive building and patterning with our new Cat In the Hat foam stacking blocks, sharpened their fine-motor skills with some Tuffula tree beading, and even got to Hop on Pop!  Of course we can't celebrate Dr. Seuss without having some Green Eggs & Ham, but we also had fun with lots of other Dr. Seuss themed meals and snacks. One of their favorites was the fish cracker graphing along with some Pink Ink Drink (also from One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish). We had colorful Lorax pasta with broccoli and asparagus "trees" and a blue alfredo river, played with Brown Bar-ba-loot bears and built our own Truffula trees (from the Lorax) using pretzel sticks and mini colored marshmallows, and at the suggestion of one of the kids, we even had a birthday cake for Dr. Seuss!  We enjoyed celebrating Dr. Seuss once again and are now looking forward to lots of rainbow fun in the next couple of weeks, building up to St. Patrick's Day!
 Well, Friday was the big day -- Dr. Seuss's birthday celebration! The kids had fun making a Green Eggs & Ham craft using a shaving cream and glue mixture for the egg whites and various other materials to complete their plate. We also had some real green eggs & ham for lunch, of course, and then graphed our results of who liked them, or didn't like them! I am happy to report the the "like" column won! :) For snack time, we had some green vanilla pudding with a vanilla wafer cookie pressed into the middle to look like an egg. After hearing the story of Bartholomew & the Oobleck, we had to make some Oobleck of our own (using cornstarch and colored water). In the story, the oobleck was green, so I put out some droppers in blue water and some yellow water and the kids got to make their own green. Of course, they had just as much fun playing in the finished product as they did mixing it up. :) "Oobleck" is such a fun substance because once you have added just the right amount of liquid to the cornstarch, the mixture takes on both solid and liquid properties at the same time. It looks liquid, and will drip from your fingers when left alone, but when rubbed or squeezed, it takes on the properties of a solid and will crack and clump.              To continue our celebration of Dr. Seuss this week, today we read "The Foot Book" & "Fox In Socks." Part of "Fox In Socks" mentions "New goo. Blue goo. Gooey. Gooey. Blue goo. New goo. Gluey. Gluey." So, we made some Blue goo of our own! I hear that some have already been asking their mom to get the "recipe" ;) so, here it is: equal parts white school glue and liquid starch (found in the laundry aisle, most commonly under the name "Sta-Flo"). That's all there is to it, unless you want to add in some food coloring like we did. Just mix them together with your hands until they are fully combined. It will go through a stringy stage right before it is done -- just keep mixing! :) Ours was a little heavy on the glue this time, so was pretty sticky, but lots of fun! We also really explored our feet today, as we took off all of the silly socks we wore for the day to paint with our feet! We have done this activity before, and it was fun to see how it evolved this time, since the kids were more familiar with it. We got to see what our footprints looked like when we walked, danced, and even jumped!      Today I got to read a Dr. Seuss book that I have never read before! "O" brought it to share with us and It is called "Scrambled Eggs Super!" We had a lot of fun with it! Throughout the book, Peter T. Hooper is collecting a wide variety of Seuss-creature eggs to make a "Scrambled eggs Super-Dee-Dooper-dee-Booper Special de luxe a-la-Peter T. Hooper!" So after we read the story, we decided to try to come up with what our own wild eggs might look like. I got out some blue and red paint, and a few painting tools and watched the creativity! :) There were speckled eggs, and patchwork eggs, patterned eggs, and some all-mixed-up eggs!  We also read Dr. Seuss's ABC book today, and as soon as the kids have had a little snack, we are going to mix up some sugar cookies and bring out the alphabet cookie cutters!       |
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