Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Students and Teachers Make the Best Educational Use of Seuss


I just finished organizing a Family Fun Night (at the school where I teach art )that we called the Seuss-a-Rama. These nights are kind of like a carnival/curriculum fair/art show. We try to provide hands-on fun learning activities that children can do with their parents and siblings. We had 715 turn out!

All of the activities were based on a Dr. Seuss book. Some of the activities included:

1. Make your own oobleck. A science experiment involving green slime.
2. Put a wocket in your pocket. Using a sock, cotton batting and craft accessories to make a "friend" to take home.
3. The Cat's Casino. In the library, we had Seuss board games and card games. Winners names were entered in a drawing in which they could win these games for their classroom.
4. Pink Ink to Drink and Fish in a dish. The snack was pink lemonade, goldfish crackers and swedish fish.
5. A Photograph to Make you Laugh. We made large paintings of Seuss characters with the heads cut out so students could stand behind it and pose as Sam I Am, the Cat, etc.
6. Snatch the Sneetch. This is a game similar to "steal the bacon" only we used a stuffed sneetch.
7. Copy the Cat. A teacher dressed in a Cat in the Hat costume led students in a game similar to "Simon Says".
8. Save Horton's Who. A beanbag toss game.
9. Seussville Station. In the computer lab, students could play an educational game at seussville.com

The event was also an art show. I have 600 students and each one had a work of art on display that was inspired by Seuss. 5th graders did acrylic paintings, 4th graders did block prints, 3rd graders did pen and ink and wtarcolors, etc. The biggest piece was a seven foot statue of the cat in the hat made of plaster of paris.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Sounds like an awesome time!