Let's Celebrate Books ~ Dr. Seuss Style! Part 2

Last year about this time, I started a post about some silly and fun Dr. Seuss-inspired activities to do with young children. I fully intended to keep adding to the list but ~ as it often does ~ life interfered and I didn't get a chance to add more ~ 

Until now!

Using the same format as my previous post, I want to share what we did at this year's Seuss-tastical Family Storytime and Game Night last night.

Here is the flannel-inspired portion of the evening. It was a very popular activity!

Ten Apples Up On Top!:

"Look! Ten apples on us all!

What fun! We will not let them fall."

Apple Counting

This is a fun counting game with a little addition thrown in ~ if you like. :o)

Chose a character and add him to the bottom of the board. 

Roll the dice and count the felt apples onto your character's head on the board. How many do you need to make 10? Can you roll the correct number? 

Roll again and add the apples. How many do you have now? Count them together.

Let your friend have a turn. Let him pick a character and add it to the board. He'll roll and count ~ and repeat!

Who has more apples up on top? Who was the closest to ten without going over? 

You will need:

Ten Apples Up On Top! book
12 felt apples in each color: red, green, and yellow
Felt characters from the book
Large foam dice
Flannel board

I made all my pieces for this game out of felt. The apples were diecut but they could easily be cut by hand. I will have to add a picture of the characters since I just realized that none of them are in the pictures above. :o( Sorry about that oversight.

After watching the excitement over this activity, I am considering the idea of making a tabletop version of this game that can be borrowed from the library along with the book. Maybe a STEM activity for checkout?!??!! 

Many of the children kept coming back to this activity. They LOVE the flannelboard! I think they would enjoy having a chance to play with the felt apples at home.

Wacky Wednesday:

"Then I looked up. And I said, "Oh, MAN!" 

And that's how Wacky Wednesday began."

Wacky Look and Find

It wasn't Wednesday but we had lots of fun searching for all of the wacky things happening in the scene depicted on our poster. The verbal interaction between the adults and the children was very interesting to hear! Many funny comments and lots of wonderful new vocabulary! 

This activity can be done several ways: 

First, the adult and child can just look at the poster together and find as many wacky items as possible.

Second, you could make a rebus-style clue sheet that shows a few items like a fish or a worm. The families can then color in the items that they find together. Once they find a certain number of picture clues, they can turn the paper in for a prize.

You will need:

Wacky Wednesday book

White posterboard

Pencil

Black marker

Crayons or markers

Tape

If you choose the second option:

Copies of clue list 

Crayons

Prizes

For my poster, I chose about 14 wacky things from the book and created a scene. I drew them off in pencil and then outlined everything with a black Sharpie. I chose to use crayons to add color because it was simple and quick.

I am not very artistic but the simple drawings from the book were pretty easy to re-create. If you prefer, you could scan a page from the book and increase the size before printing it out.

Getting up close to the wackiness so  they can see it all!

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish:

"Say! what a lot of fish there are!"

Colorful Fish Roll

There are lots of colorful fish in the pond! Let's do some color matching and see how many pairs of fish we can match with just one roll of the dice.

This game was put together with a few things I had around the house. The "pond" was an inexpensive, plastic blue platter that I believe I bought at Wal Mart for under $2.00. The cup was a Dr. Seuss-themed cup from the $1.00 aisle at Target last year ~ but you can use any cup you have at home already. And the colorful fish dice were from a game that I recently purchased at JoAnn's. There were 16 dice in the game so I split them up and made two games. 

If you don't want to purchase the dice, it is possible to make up your own. 

Very simple to do!

 I have two options to share for making your own die. I will link the post here when it is ready. :o)

Roll and match!
A simple way to work on recognizing colors and naming them.

What You Will Need:

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish book

Blue plate (plastic)

Cup

Set of 8 dice with different colored fish on each side

We played the game by placing all the die into the cup, shaking them around, and then rolling the die out into the "pond". Next, the child placed two fish of the same color together making a pair and naming the color. After making all the pairs, count them. The next person then takes their turn to see if they can make more pairs.