Dr. Seuss Week: Days 3-5

Day 3 of our unit was Dr. Seuss' birthday, and all birthdays MUST have cupcakes! :)

Our focus book for Day 3 was:

I just LOVE this book because it teaches SUCH a great lesson on preserving the environment. My kiddies were SO into this book and we had a fantastic discussion afterward. We discussed how the Once-ler hurt the environment, and the kids were really kind of mad at him for cutting down all the beautiful truffula trees and for hurting the animals' habitats! 

After we read the book I asked to kids to each write a letter to the Once-ler telling him why he should not cut down the truffula trees (great mini-lesson on friendly letter format!) They came up with the CUTEST letters to the Once-ler!

I took their letters home and mailed them to the Once-ler :) When I got to school the next morning, I checked my box, and guess what?! He wrote us back!! (We had some seriously express mail lol) The kids were soooo excited to find a big letter from him!

Inside the envelope he also sent us some Truffula Seeds to plant! We decided to go plant them by the fence on the playground.

I just LOVED this activity! My friend, Mrs. B, and I came up with it last minute the night before!! I am SOOOO glad we thought of it! Next year we want to have a little packet of seeds for each child to take home with a cute little note or poem attached to it :)

Day 4 our focus book was:

This book is great for reviewing nouns (even though they are silly ones!) We each graphed the number of pockets that each student in our class had. Then we interpreted the data in many different ways. We also worked on our flip books. I completely forgot to take pictures of these little activities! Boo!

Throughout the week, I met with each of my small reading groups. On normal weeks, the books we read are leveled, but this week was a fun week, so we all read

And really, what kid doesn't love The Cat in the Hat??! :)

We worked on our descriptive writing by designing a new hat for The Cat and writing a detailed description of it. I hung all of the hats up on the board and each child got to read his/her description. Then the class had to try and guess that child's hat based on his/her description.

During the writing process I told them that the goal was for their classmates to be able to picture the hat in their heads, and to be able to figure out which hat it was in just one guess. Some of them wrote the most detailed descriptions ever! This was a fun activity for my kiddos.

Day 5:

We read this in the morning and completed our flip books (posted a little ways down!!) You cannot read this book and NOT make oobleck! So in the afternoon we did a science investigation with oobleck!

We first discussed the differences between solids and liquids, and the kids had a great conversation going.

As a class we predicted whether we thought oobleck was solid or liquid based on what it looked like, and what we knew about solids and liquids.

I made a record sheet for the kids (which I am not quite sure how to load on here yet!). They predicted whether a cotton ball, yarn, a penny, a paper clip and a pipe cleaner would sink or float in the oobleck. Then they recorded their results.

 I had them stir the oobleck with a popsicle stick very slooooowly and very quickly and record what happened each time. They learned that when they stirred it slowly that it was easy and felt like a liquid. But when they stirred it quickly it was just the opposite!

Then they got to feel the oobleck. I had them poke it over and over again very fast-they thought it was a solid! Then I had them touch it very sloooowly-they thought it was a liquid!

It was soooo fun to listen to their discussions about why it was a liquid and why it was a solid. We never did figure out which it was!! Oobleck has properties of both a solid and a liquid!! It was a great science lesson!

**I strongly suggest having another adult (or two!) help you prepare the oobleck and help during this lesson!! Thank you to my former student teacher for helping!! :)**

Since the week is over, my kids turned in their flip books. They included rhyming pairs from each book, a sentence or two stating their opinion of each book, and a picture from the book.

And here is what my mini bulletin board looked like this week :) I included the Reader's Oath (which each child signed!) and we kept track of allllll the Dr. Seuss books we read together this week!! Very simple and not a lot of prep time :)

15 books in one week... not too shabby :) We have LOTS more that the kids want to continue reading next week, and I am soooo okay with it!      “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” --Dr. Seuss