Seuss-y School

It's school with a Seuss-y twist!  I had been finding lots of great ideas for what to do with Dr. Seuss books and so I wanted to apply some of those with an educational twist.  I didn't own all of the Dr. Seuss books in fact I was missing quite a few of the classics that are really necessary for something like this and so I headed to Half.com and ordered several books for $0.75 (don't get too excited, I still had to pay close to $4 to ship each book, but it was still the cheapest option.) It's always a gamble of their quality at that price but I'm happy to report that I had a 60% success rate with the books I purchased and a 100% "we'll make it work" success (although I probably will rebuy One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.)   With our books procured, I began developing the lessons that would be loosely themed to certain books.  Not all books had a lesson associated with them, some of them were just used during reading time.

Ace's first tray has cards with mom/baby farm animals.  I found them for free at Counting Coconuts, printed, laminated and stored them in a pencil pouch.     This was very easily paired up with Are You My Mother? (an idea that my friend Carrie came up with, thanks!)  And actually by total coincidence all the animals in the small board book were also within the flashcards.    Ace enjoyed this one and has learned some mom and baby combos.  Although he's thoroughly confused about the whole goat baby being called a 'kid'.  He keeps going in circles regarding the fact that he is a kid and that is NOT a kid.  I'd object too if a goat was being compared to me too.  :)

The next tray we have focused on learning some new terms for sizing things.  Ace is pretty good at understanding big, medium, little/small.    So I wanted to introduce another concept with Big, Bigger, Biggest and Small, Smaller, Smallest.   I found this idea with an entire Dr. Seuss unit here, but that unit was too advanced for Ace and I wasn't a fan of the printouts they used for their 'big/small' items and so I went on the hunt and made my own.  Ace did pretty well with it all thought he kept morphing 'medium' into the mix dispite his best efforts. 

The book that accompanies this lesson is Horton Hears a Who!  Ace liked it ok - but since it is one of Dr. Seuss' longer books it wasn't his favorite.  Perhaps he might enjoy the movie.  Although he did like the line "A person is a person no matter how small."  Which I've always loved and kind of consider it my mantra.

For Ace's math skills (which currently are just counting into the teens at the moment) I introduced some sandpaper numbers.   The idea is that he can trace his finger on them and get a feel for how he would later write them.  I ordered the sandpaper numbers here.  Since they were new the first few times it mostly was an exciting pile of them.  They'll become more educational as the exposure to them increases.  The books that accompanied these numbers were Ten Apples Up on Top and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  

I also had a food activity included with One Fish, Two Fish which I was inspired by from here.   Which was a huge hit with the boy.   I am not sure I've had 'blue' jello before but this stuff was yummy.   Ace enjoyed making it and I am patting myself on the back that I got the Jello to set.

In honor of Thing One and Thing Two that often are seen with the Cat in the Hat on his tv show I created a matching game using pictures of his family members.  Our family of four and the four grandparents.   This by far is the biggest hit.   Ace LOVES to do this tray more than any other.    He likes to line them up, play the matching game, and sometimes just bring them over and smile saying that's our whole family.  It's really sweet.  I plan to expand this game with some of his other friends/family as well and rotate in some new faces every now and then.   

The book that accompanies this tray is The Cat in the Hat's Great Big Flap Book.   Ace enjoys this book in spite of it being one of the books that didn't win the $0.75 half.com lottery.  ;-)  He also received a pair of fun socks when I first gave him that book, which he thought was "pretty cool!"

His final tray was his movable alphabet that I blogged about here and was accompanied by Dr. Seuss' ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! Which the book in general was a huge hit - although filled with very silly not real words.   He enjoys it. 

Overall, Seuss-y School was much fun.   We still need to make some green eggs and ham (to go with the obvious choice of Green Eggs and Ham)  and paint his feet and make an art project in correlation with The Foot Book. I'll be sure to post about those activities if and when we get to them (they're really more involved and require a lot of time that Mae can't participate in - so it's difficult to execute.)   It's been a lot of fun to create and help Ace learn some very non-seussical things with a very seussical theme.  :)

UPDATE: 3/1/2012  **Thank you for all the Pinterest Interest**   Please if you are pinning (or repinning) please do not pin the pictures of my kids. I try my best to always include pictures that don't include my kids so that you have something to pin.   Thank you!
Linked up on: Living Montessori Now, Sun Scholars, Mom of 2 Posh Divas, Classified: Mom, Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, and Preschool Corner.

UPDATE: 3/10/2013 - Another Suess-y blog on food and bath fun is here!