Celebrating Dr Seuss' Birthday - Activities for Middle School

It is Dr Seuss’ birthday later this week (March 2nd) and coincidentally, a local museum has a temporary special exhibit on the artwork of Dr Seuss (see The Art of Dr. Seuss). I figured it was thereby time we celebrated his contributions to children’s literature and art. To prepare for a visit to the museum, we spent the week enjoying a number of his books, most notably;

• The Shape of Me & Other Things
• Bartholomew & the Oobleck
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• The Lorax
• Horton Hears a Who

I integrated a few other lessons to captivate their imaginations and hopefully, lead us on a few bunny trails.  I love silhouettes and I use them frequently for a number of creative projects – from ATCs, to scrapbook pages, and on occasion to create my own stencils to paint on t-shirts. The Shape of Me & Other Things thereby inspired me to create a profile silhouette of each of the kids.  A friend was staying with us this day … so we have three munchkins pictured.

Predictably, we had to explore the properties of Oobleck upon reading Bartholomew & the Oobleck.  The girls were both familiar with this non-Newtonian fluid.  I was surprised to discover that my little guy was not … an important lesson for me, once again, that I frequently plan our curriculum around Sweetie.  I need to take his experiences to mind as well.

Today, we’ll read The Boy on Fairfield Street by Kathleen Krull and complete an ‘Artist Biography’ notebook page.  Thereafter, we’ll add Ted Geisel to our ‘Book of Centuries’ and select a favorite art to emulate.  I may even surprise the munchkins Friday morning with green eggs and ham.