Read Across America!

It's been awhile since my last post. Swamped with a crazy schedule and long days, I am amazed at all the incredible teachers and parents who dedicate their time consistently to their blogs. Thank you to all of you!

Kindergarten has been a fabulous experience and I adore teaching my kids. Their drive to learn is phenomenal and I am just as eager to help them soar. I have wide ranges of ability within my class (whose class doesn't?) and meeting each of their unique needs can be challenging. Still, Kindergarten allows for center time and small group plans easier than with my second and thrid graders.

The Books

The last few days have been a step away from the regular curriculum, however, to celebrate Dr. Seuss and Read Across America Day. Boy, we plowed through a number of his books: A Great Day for Up, Would You Like to Fly a Jet? Would You Like to be a Vet?, Yertle the Turtle, The Cat in the Hat, Oh, The Places You Will Go!, and Horton Hears a Who. Even after all six books, the kids loved the different Dr. Seuss stories and a few brought books of his that we'll have to read into the next week. We'll see how many books of his we can read by the end of the school year!!

The Crafts
 As many others do, we made Dr. Seuss hats to go along with the book: The Cat in the Hat. Easy enough craft with hard white paper base of 12x6. The red strips were random widths, but 6 inches long. The bands were made with red construction paper at 18 inches and worked just fine, but I will probably use thicker paper to make it more sturdy next year.

In their hands you can see the other craft we did. We made Thing Ones and Thing Twos and Thing One-Hundred-Ones. The kids wanted to be able to write any number, so why not?! They were a little tricky for some, but the results are still great!

The Activities
We had a pajama day for curling up and reading for a school-wide Read Across the School day. We had guest readers: different teachers and assistants reading. We watched Horton Hears a Who. And we wrote a book review for: Yertle the Turtle.

I love Dr. Seuss and we'll likely do some other activities with him next week and throughout the rest of the year. We'll definitely be doing things with The Lorax around Earth Day and we will probably read  Oh, The Places You Will Go! again at the end of the year. I'll be sure to post what all the things we do with those are.