Dr. Seuss Display

So, like most of my big projects, this one was waaaaay overdue. But I wanted to share the display that I put together to celebrate Dr. Seuss and Read Across America! We had so many pictures of our kids and teachers participating in different events that I had to show it off!

I love using cute fonts to create displays -it adds so much texture!

I printed out the letters "Read Across America" in one of my favorite Kimberly Geswein fonts and cut them out. Then I taped them onto some colorful yarn and draped them across the top.

We printed out pictures of our kids celebrating Dr. Seuss and stuck them to the front of the display. We had pictures from our guest readers (read about that here). The kids LOVE to see themselves on display!

To tie up the ends, I made big yarn bows and taped them to the corners.

Inside, I put our collection of Seuss books and stuffed animals, along with the truffula trees and Seuss Arrows I made last week. You can read about how to make those here! Pin It

Read Across America Week: Celebrating Dr. Seuss with Style!

This past week, my school celebrated Read Across America with special dress-up opportunities each day. 

So on the morning of the first day of our Read Across America Week celebration, and at home, I remembered reading that it was crazy/mismatched socks day!  I grabbed a polka-dotted red sock and an argyle pink sock and I put them on. I put on my shoes and cuffed my khakis to really show off my crazy socks.    I got out of the car and started walking toward the school building through the parking lot. It was at this point I started looking for other crazy socks - I checked the kids, I checked the teachers, I checked every pair of ankles for some crazy socks.   And I didn't see any! I started to get a little self-conscious about my socks. And I started to get a LOT self-conscious about my cuffed khakis.   And I started to wonder if today was crazy sock day at all!   I finally made it to my room and texted my librarian, "It IS crazy sock day, right?!" No reply.   Now I started to feel pretty silly in my silly socks.   Until I saw the kindergartner. She had on silly socks and silly shoes - blue and green sock on one foot, and pink and orange sock on the other. Whew.   So I was celebrating crazy sock day on the right day. It's just that everybody else (except for me and the kindergartner) is lame.   I was feeling vindicated about my socks, and so I told my story to one of the special education teachers. He sheepishly said, "Umm....so was it JUST crazy sock day? Because... I wore two different shoes." I looked at his feet and sure enough, he had on a black one and a brown one. "Don't worry," I said. "It's Crazy Sock & Shoe Day!" and he was relieved. I know the feeling.   Anyway, Monday was Crazy Sock & Shoe Day.  

  Tuesday was Wear Stripes!  

So I had to really hunt in my closet for something with stripes - I tend to avoid horizontal stripes because I don't want to look like a watermelon. It's a fine line.

Wednesday was Pajama Day (YESSSSS!) It was a little awkward, because we had a half-day, and I had to give a training in the afternoon. It's hard to train in slippers.  

Don't you love the Lorax background? Our principal made it, entirely out of fabric! The puffs on top of the truffula trees are tulle! Thursday was Crazy Hair or Hat Day! This is as crazy as it gets.  

  And Friday is wear red - this is the day we have our guest readers. We don't want to have too much weird stuff going on or they might not come back.   But we were able to buy these adorable Dr. Seuss shirts to wear on this day! I LOVE my shirt!  

  This was a fun week. I had a blast. And by Friday I was DEAD tired.    For more Seusstastic ideas, check out the Primary Chalkboard Link-Up!

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Read Across America Week: Celebrating Some Dr. Seusiness with...duh... Reading!

My librarian and I have had a blast planning our Read Across America schoolwide celebration! It seems like every time we talked about it, we added another fun element for the kids and for the teachers!   We celebrated our week o' reading early for reasons I do not know. But it gave me a jump on blogging and sharing these ideas with you, so you can use them this week!    Monday   During PE on Monday, each student was brought to the library. We had been collecting books all year, in English and Spanish for all grade levels. The kids each got to choose one free book, a pencil, and a bookmark! What better way to create excitement about reading than by giving them books they can read?!

One great way to collect cheap-ish books to give away to students is FirstBook.org. First Book is a great program designed to give kids a chance by providing books at the cost of shipping only to schools who qualify by having Title I, etc. We've placed several orders with First Book this year with great results.

Later that day, thirty minutes before the end of the school day, we asked teachers to stop their instruction, get their most favorite picture book in the world, and go to another classroom to read to the class! Some teachers decided to dress up, and some brought props! 

One of our second grade teachers, Diciembre, dressed up as Fancy Nancy! She remained in character with a Fancy Nancy attitude as she went to the other second grade classrooms. What a great way to celebrate books with kids!

  Many teachers even used their Special Delivery Book Bags  to create excitement about reading! The teachers and kids loved it - they were so excited to share their favorite books, and the kids looooved having a different reader for a while!

Tuesday - Thursday Tuesday through Thursday, everybody in the school Dropped Everything And Read (Drop Everything And Read) for fifteen minutes each day. It's an easy way to excited kids about reading!  Kids could read anything they wanted, and so could the teachers - although we did ask that they avoid Fifty Shades of Gray. We didn't want to create THAT kind of reading excitement.
Friday On Friday, we had our guest readers - members of the community - come visit our school and read books aloud to the kids. This is always a special day full of interesting visitors and books. It's a challenge for our librarian to collect enough readers who can confirm that they'll be present, and the schedule is a bear, but it's worth it to see how much the kids enjoy their guest readers!   

A great guest reader from Border Patrol!

A therapist who came to read to our kids!

Our librarian decorated a room for the readers to lounge in and practice reading their books before they went to read in the classrooms. We created these cute centerpieces for the tables using the pots we made for our marshmallow pop treats for the teachers earlier in the week. Read about that here!  

  My librarian buddy set up a cute table full of books where the readers could choose a book to read to the classes they visited. There was a basket of great books in English, another basket in Spanish, and another full of Dr. Seuss books.

 

We decorated with the truffula trees I made last weekend! Read about that here!

I'd love to hear about how you celebrate Dr. Seuss! What do you do at your school?

For more Seusstastic ideas, check out the Primary Chalkboard Link-Up!

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Read Across America Week: Celebrating Dr. Seussiness with Treats and Snacks!

My school decided to celebrate the week leading up to Dr. Seuss' birthday by spending the whole week with fun literacy activities and projects. We have had a blast thinking of activities and ways to celebrate reading!   Tomorrow I'm going to share about how we celebrated Dr. Seuss with reading activities. But for today, my post is all about the tasty part: food (and other treats)!

My librarian buddy and I decided to hunt around on pinterest for some adorable ideas to make for our teachers. She already had planned to give out cute Dr. Seuss bags with hat-shaped dry erase boards, and bookmarks & pencils another day, so they were going to get some cute teacher stuff (we love cute teacher stuff, don't we?).    And then we thought, "What about.... food? Food is fun. Food is cute. Food is crafty and everyone loves it! So we searched and searched and settled on three cute snacks for our teachers. We gave them one item each day of the week to celebrate Read Across America all week long!
Monday Marshmallow pops

First, we skewered the marshmallows on these adorable polka-dotted straws. My librarian found them at Party City, but I know Hobby Lobby has something similar.

 We dipped them into melted white chocolate (we used the Wilton brand chips) and let the excess chocolate drip off (this part took the longest!)

Then I scooped sprinkles over the top. We made several different kinds by using different sprinkles - red, blue sugar, red, white, and blue stars, and red and blue mixes.   

I stuck them into a few pots with styrofoam inside to help them stand up (and to look cute). We left them on the counter in the lounge with a little sign to let teachers know they could take one.  

We decorated the table with the book The Lorax, our little signes that we printed, th epots of marshmallow pops, and this cute Dr. Seuss sign my librarian buddy had. We added the truffula trees I made this weekend (find the directions here, if you want to make your own!).

original pin idea for marshmallow pops here We made 76 pops - it took two full bags of marshmallows, two bags of sprinkles, two bags of Wilton candy melts (light blue) and eight packages of paper straws.   Tuesday
Fish in a bowl

  One fish, two fish, these are for you fish!   

These were the easiest treat. Scoop and pour, and you're done! You can grab the printable labels here at Google Drive.   Wednesday
Ok, this isn't food. On this day, we had a half-day for training. And I was giving the training. So we kept it simple! My librarian had bought this adorable stuff for teachers! 

Each teacher got a bag and a cute dry-erase board shaped like the Cat in the Hat's hat!

  I did get to celebrate Dr. Seuss with food today, though. The kindergarten teachers made green eggs & ham for their kids and I got a plate for myself!

It was waaay tastier than it looks.
Thursday
Cat in the Hat Jell-o

Are these adorable or what?!

Our principal asked the cafeteria to make the red Jell-o for us, and the librarian and I supplied the cups, spoons, and Cool Whip. 

We scooped a little jello, and then a little cool whip, and then a little jello and then a little cool whip, until we had a cat-in-the-hat-ish sort of treat! 

We sprayed the top with whipped cream and added a spoon for a fun treat.

original pin idea here
Friday
Bookmark, Pencil, & eraser

    I know Friday seems kind of anti-climactic, but this was the day when we had our guest readers and didn't have the time during the day to assemble a tasty snack!
Overall, it was a fun and sweet week, and I hope our kids and teachers got a kick out of our fun Seussiness! Check back tomorrow to read about how we celebrated Read Across America Week with ... gasp... READING!
Happy Teaching! For more ideas about Everything Dr. Seuss, check out the Primary Chalkboard's Link-Up!

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Getting ready for Read Across America: making my own truffula trees!

My librarian and I have been driving each other nuts about planning our Read Across America celebration. We talk about it EVERY DAY and seem to add more and more and more, until we finally say, "Who's gonna do all this stuff?!" Anyway, I got a headstart this past weekend with some craftiness that I wanted to share. This project was so easy but it really got a lot of attention from the kids and teachers, so it's worth it!

Don't you LOVE it?! Its my own truffula tree! AAAAAA!

And they were so easy to make, that I decided I had to share them for Monday Made It!

This is what I needed to make two pots with two truffula trees in each.

- Two pots (I used plastic, but you could use whatever you have. I got mine from Wal-Mart for $.97)

- Four sticks. Curvy sticks from your actual trees make GREAT truffula trees.

- Spanish moss. You could also use Easter grass or paper shred.

- Ribbon, thin enough to wrap around the tree trunk.

- Four styrofoam balls. 

- Styrofoam or floral foam, to put in the pots to keep the trees from falling over. I guess you could also "plant" it, but I don't know how that would work.

- A feather boa from the craft section - you can find them at Wal-Mart.

- White paint (and paintbrush)

-Glue gun & glue sticks.

Ok, so that seems like a lot of stuff, but it was actually really easy.

First, I painted the sticks white and I let them dry.

Once they were dry, I hot-glued ribbon (I only had blue, but you could use black) to one end and then wrapped it in a spiral all the way up to the other end. Then I hot glued the end down.

Then I cut the styrofoam to fit inside the pots. I did this outside, because it left FAR less mess to clean up.  I took the boa and hot glued one end onto the styrofoam ball. I continued to glue around the ball until it was fluffy and the styrofoam was hidden. Then I cut off the rest of the boa to use on the other ball. I repeated this until I had covered four styrofoam spheres. (Can you tell I'm trying to avoid the plural of "ball" here? It must come from having four brothers, or teaching fourth graders.)

I shoved the stick into the styrofoam in the pot, and then I shoved the styrofoam ball on the end of the stick. So cute.

Then I took Spanish moss and glued it around the base of the trunk, to cover the styrofoam.

The original site where I found the directions for the truffula trees is here at Hangin with Mrs. Cooper - her trees were much larger than mine, because they're for a classroom decoration all year! Pin It