Hats Off to Dr. Seuss!

    Well, with finishing up mid-year assessments and kicking my butt into Party Planning Mode for my little one's birthday, I haven’t had a minute to blog about our Dr. Seuss fun!

   This week is our Dr. Seuss week! Along with Read Across America, my Head Start program has devoted this week to honoring Dr. Seuss.

    Each day we have committed to reading one book and then have followed it up with different  activities! We have encouraged parent participation and have asked parents to sign up to come and read one of the books in the classroom.

   On Monday, I introduced the author Dr. Seuss and my preschool munchkins were so surprised when they saw my wide collection of Dr. Seuss books!

   I didn’t have a parent signup for Monday to read The Cat in the Hat—which was OK with me. I was planning on reading it myself anyway. I even dressed for the part, wearing all black, and a Cat in the Hat headband... and I forgot my red scarf!!   (Don't laugh!  This is one of the rare photos that you will actually see me in!) 

   Our activities that day focused on patterns and the kids painted a red & white striped hat.

    Another activity focused on the word: READ. They learned how to spell it, as they painted each letter.

   And after reviewing the data from my mid-year assessments, a skill that my kiddos need a little more practice on is rhyming. So this week is a perfect time to dive right into it!

   I found this “-at” word family packet on TPT, from Live, Laugh I LOVE Kindergarten, to use with the kids.

    I had to tweak it a little bit to  use in small groups,  to fit the needs and abilities of my students. It is a great packet that offers differentiated printables!

   First we labeled words that rhyme with “cat” and then we played a rhyming game. I took the pictures from the packet and glued them onto Dr. Seuss hats (to keep the consistency of the pictures so they wouldn't get too confused) and then I gave each child a pair of words and asked if they rhymed or not.

    (I noticed that a few of them used the word mats to reference back to and if they word/picture was not there, then the word/picture did not rhyme with “cat”.)

    Then I utilized a few of the worksheets with them to practice writing the rhyming words.

Stay tuned tomorrow to see what fun we had with Green Eggs & Ham!