Dr. Suess/Eric Carle Week

This was my favorite week so far!!  The kids were so engaged and happy.  We all had a great time reading books from these two amazing authors and doing lots of fun activities.

Our first day was the day after Dr. Suess’s birthday.  So we did all things Dr. Suess.

• Calendar Time: Read "Dr. Suess’s ABC’s”  While the kids acted out all the different animals in the book.
• We read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”  And then played a fishing game.  This was a great activity to enforce taking turns.
• Read “Bartholomew and the Oobleck”  Then the kids made “Oobleck”  It was a simple science experiment that the kids were able to do almost on their own.  They simply added Elmers glue and dyed Borax solution to their little cup.  They LOVED this.
• Next we read “The Foot Book” then we drew our feet on a paper and they ‘measured’ their feet with different objects.  This gave me a chance to teach them about measuring.  And gave them great fine motor exercises and practice counting.
• For Snack time I made them “Cat Hats” out of strawberries and bananas and “green eggs” (hard boiled eggs with guacamole).  While they ate I read “Green Eggs and Ham”.
• After snacks we played a cat in the hat dice/counting game.  The kids had to roll a dice and find a stripe with a corresponding number. 
• Finally we read “If I Ran the Zoo”  and the kids designed their own crazy animal with dough pipe cleaners and googley eyes.

The Next day we did Eric Carle Books.  Again the kids were amazing. 

• For Calendar Time we read “Head to Toe” the kids loved acting this one out.  Our letter of the day was S so we also read “Will you be my friend?” and the kids made the SSSSSS/snakey sound as we followed the snakes tail to the end.  Finally they let me read a third book, “Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do You Hear?” They loved making each of the animals sounds and we talked about hearing and sound.
• Our Shape for the week was symmetrical shapes.  So I had the kids build different shapes with wicky sticks and then use a small mirror to see how they are the same on both sides.  I was surprised at how much they enjoyed doing this activity.  
• We then read “the Mixed Up Chameleon” and then the kids went out side to ‘hunt’ for chameleons throughout the yard.
• We read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.  We reviewed our days of the week and talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar/butterfly.  The kids then made caterpillars by stringing dyed cheerios onto a pipe cleaner.  Then they cut colored paper and made butterfly wings like the butterfly in the book.
• For our Snack time we read “Pancake, Pancake!” and the kids made the Pancake batter.  Then got to enjoy their cooking.
• Finally we read “Little Cloud”.  The kids then chose what shape they wanted their little cloud to be from cookie cutters.  We traced the shape and they ‘painted’ in the shape with a glue/paint then filled it in with cotton to make their ‘little cloud’.