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Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss Activities

2013
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We are still counting down the days until Dr. Seuss’ birthday with lots of fun Dr. Seuss books and activities!  The last couple of days we have been reading and playing with Green Eggs and Ham and have all been walking around the house quoting Sam-I-am!

Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss Games and Activities

My kids love book extension activities that are simple and can be done again and again so the Green Eggs and Ham games I came up with were a big hit!  We played a Green Egg Relay game and made some Green Egg Word Chunk Spinners.

Green Eggs and Ham Relay Game

My preschoolers worked on developing their motor skills during the Green Egg Relay game.  I filled a plastic Easter egg with rice and the kids practiced carrying it across the room on a soup spoon.  When they got to the person on the other side they had to transfer it from their spoon to the other spoon.

Green Eggs and Ham Word Chunk Game

Then we turned some of the rhyming words in the story into a word chunk game!  I wrote some of the word chunks that my 4 year old is practicing on the bottom of the plastic egg and consonants on the top half.  He could then spin the egg parts around to form and read new words.  These are great for entertaining kids in the car too!

I have really enjoyed looking through all of the Dr. Seuss Virtual Book Club for Kids posts that have been linked up so far and found some really cool Green Eggs and Ham ones.

Check them out:

Linking to:

VirtualBookClub

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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

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Story Prop Bag Comprehension Activity

2012
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Good readers need to be able to recall and retell story events in order to understand what they are reading.  A fun way to practice these skills with young readers is to create a story prop bag.  They are super easy to make!  Before reading the story to kids you gather a bunch of items that are found in the story and put them in a bag.

Then when it’s time to read you pull out the items one by one for the children to look at, touch, and think about.  The kids use the props as clues to make predictions about the story.  As more of the props come out of the bag the kids can change and modify their predictions and to help their brains ready to read and remember the new information.

You then use the props as you read to help tell the story and give the kids time to interact with the different items.  After reading the kids use the props to retell and act out the story.  This is not only fun to do, it helps kids make connections about the text and develop comprehension skills.

 More Uses for Story Props:

  • The story prop bag can then be given to the kids for pretend play where the learning can be extended further.
  • Older kids can use the story props to practice summarizing stories, writing their own story questions, and analyzing story elements.
  • It’s fun for parents to put together a story prop bag when they go in to read to their kids classes. (That’s what my husband did when he read If You Give a Moose a Muffin to my daughter’s kindergarten class this year.)
  • Kids can put together a story prop bag to demonstrate their understanding of a story they have read.
  • Families can make a bag to kids excited about a new challenge such as going to the dentist or starting school.  Finding a book and putting together the prop bag helps a child gain confidence and become familiar with new situations.
  • Babysitters can bring a story and a prop bag with them when they are babysitting to help break the ice with new kids are get them interested in a new story.

Story prop bags are a fun way to get kids to interact with text and encourage pretend play.  Have you ever used one when reading to kids before?

Filed Under: Learning Activities, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Naked Mole Rat Play Dough Activity

2012
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One of our summer activities is to participate in Reading Confetti‘s Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!  Each month she chooses a different author and participants read one of his/her books and do an activity related to the book.  This month’s author is Mo Willems.  We love Mo Willems here and ended up reading, and rereading, 4 of his books last week–The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and Pigs Make Me Sneeze!  Such great reads, we definitely recommend all of them!

Once of the most reread books was Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.  It’s the story of a naked mole rat who likes to wear clothes.  In fact he likes to wear clothes so much he opened his own shop.  His clothes-wearing makes the other mole rats very uncomfortable and they take the issue to Grand-pah for consideration.  You’ll have to read it yourself to see how it ends, but I will go out on a limb and predict you’ll love it.

They loved the idea of the naked mole rat getting dressed and wanted to make their own mole rat to dress up.  The 6 year old drew a naked mole rat on construction paper and we laminated it so we could reuse it.

 Then the kids got to work!  They made tons of play dough clothes and accessories for our naked mole rat.  Including a light saber!

After they had all the socks and sandwiches and shirts and light sabers they needed it was time to dress him up!

They used the play dough props to reenact parts of the story and to role play how the mole rat should react to his friends when they don’t like that he wears clothes.  All without any prompting from me.

Doing crafts and activities to go along with a book not only increases your child’s enjoyment of the story it helps develop their comprehension skills and allows them to better internalize the author’s message.  The activities don’t have to be elaborate or “pinnable”, it’s the simple activities that are can be the most loved.  Especially, when kids are given the chance to do them over and over and over again.

Linking up to:

Make sure to check it out to see all of the Mo Willems book and activity ideas that other bloggers come up with this month!

Also linking to:

   While we were busy creating mole rat clothes out of play dough the folks at The Imagination Tree, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots, and Nurturestore were hosting a play dough play date!  Stop by to see TONS of great play dough recipes, why playing with play dough is important, and lots of fun ways to add play dough into your play.

Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Practice Reading with a Whisper Reader

2012
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One of my kindergartener’s favorite ways to practice reading is with our whisper readers.  A whisper reader is like a little “phone” kids can whisper read into and hear their words amplified in their ears.  It is a great way to build fluency and it lots of fun to use!

Yep.  That is PVC piping you’re looking at!  Whisper readers are super easy to make–all you have to do is connect two 1 1/2 inch corners together.

Re-reading text helps kids build fluency skills and a whisper reader makes re-reading a lot more fun!

Linking to some of my favorite parties:

kids crafts

Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , ,