Cat In the Hat Day at School

Even though our school didn't celebrate the book The Cat in the Hat today, my class sure did!  As I mentioned before, our school has a teacher reader exchange.  Basically every teacher in the school (principal included) chooses a book to read to a group of 25 kids.  The book can be a Dr. Seuss book, but doesn't have to be.  The day before the exchange, the teachers take their students around the halls to sign up for a book to have read to them by another teacher.  The sign ups are posted either on the teacher's door or in the hall next to their room. 

Most teachers also include a photocopy of the book so the younger kids actually know what they're signing up for. :)  On the day of the swap, the teachers are to read the chosen book and possibly do an activity to fill up the 20 minutes.  This can be somewhat challenging considering we are entertaining a group of students varying in ages from kindergarten - 6th grade, but regardless it is always fun.
Last year I read the story Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon and passed out fun sized (waterMELON flavored) Laffy Taffy candies.  I felt these went well with the story because of the MELON part, but also in this book the grandmother tells Molly Lou Melon to "Smile big and the world will smile right alongside you."  And as we know, jokes (like the ones on Laffy Taffy) make everyone smile!
This year I decided to read a book I think is great fun too...Diary of a Worm.  Seriously makes me laugh!  I thought about giving out gummy worms or doing some activity to tie it together with the book, but ultimately I went with a Dr. Seuss idea.  We made these Cat in the Hat snacks (as suggested on my prior post).

The kids really enjoyed making them, but loved eating them even more!  I had to of course make them with my own students when  they returned to class!
The other part of this Cat in the Hat day came when one of the teachers on my team offered to let me borrow her how-to draw the Cat in the Hat DVD.  I'm not really sure where the DVD came from to refer it to you, but if you would like to teach your kiddos how to draw the cat too, I did come across this step-by-step tutorial you could follow from Fairy Dust Teaching.  What you'll need to complete this art project is:  white card stock or (12 x 18) construction paper, like what we used, and red & black markers (Sharpies).  And the result will be something a little like these cute buggers my firsties created.

They were so proud of their work, and they had great reason to be!  Aren't they the cutest things ever!?!
The last thing we did was to add a Cats In Hats poem to our poetry notebooks.

As always, we read the poem as a class and looked for rhyming words to highlight.  I try to add a poem a week to these notebooks, most of which I got from Just 4 Teachers to go along with our reading program Treasures.  Every once in a while I throw in a poem that goes along with something else we are studying, holidays, etc.  Pair the poem with a Cat in the Hat coloring page and we were set.

Hope your Dr. Seuss week is going well so far!