Dr. Seuss Style Valentine Box

My kids and I love to make Valentine boxes for their school parties each year.
This Cat in the Hat box was a simple box my daughter made this weekend.

Kids can make most of this by themselves if they know how to cut and glue.  You may want to help mark where to cut so you have the right sizes, and cut the top hole out.

All you need is a few simple items you may have around your house already.
Supplies Needed & How To Make The Cat in the Hat Valentine Box:

• 1 tall round oatmeal container. Found in your local grocery store. (Dump your oatmeal into a re-sealable plastic bag to save it so you can use the box.)
• 3-4 pieces of white construction or copy paper. Glue full pieces around the box to cover the container. Also cut a circle wider than the bottom of the container to become the brim of the hat. Lay the white paper under the container and trace a circle about 2 inches around it.
• 2 pieces of Red construction paper. Cut strips to glue around the hat as stripes. Cut a circle to cover the top and a heart to add your name and add a touch of Valentine’s.
• Cut a rectangle out of the top to allow children to slip their Valentine cards inside (A parent should help with this because the box it tough to cut through.)
• The plastic lid is easy to remove to obtain your valentine cards.

This would be a fun craft for kids to do at home or in the classroom.

A Variety of Uses:

• You could display the hats in the middle of tables for a centerpiece at a party.
• You could turn this into a piggie bank to let your kids save their money.
• The hat would be great to store other small toys.
• This hat could be a game if you secretly put something inside then had your child guess what was inside. (Kind of like this Dr. Seuss game.)
• You could also use it for a costume hat if you poked holes in the bottom sides of the container and added string to tie under your chin.

We’re gearing up for Dr. Seuss’ Birthday in March so check back for more ideas we’ll be sharing on obSEUSSed.

Dr. Seuss School Prizes and Party Favors

I remember back in the day (12 years ago) I was surfing eBay trying to find any vintage Dr. Seuss items to decorate my baby’s nursery.  Dr. Seuss décor, toys and office supplies were very rare to find.  Then the live-action Cat in the Hat movie came out in 2003 and Dr. Seuss started popping up everywhere. 

One of my favorite places to shop online for Dr. Seuss merchandise is RaymondGeddes.com.  I love that they sell items in bulk (perfect for stocking stuffers, party favor or school prizes) making most items less than a dollar each.  Stock up now for Christmas or Dr. Seuss celebrations in the spring. (Click here to see all of their Dr. Seuss products.)
Current deal (Nov. 2014) Free Shipping On Orders > $79! Use Promo Code: 14FS79 Or use code: SAVE10A to save 10% off your order.

I’ve purchased  Dr. Seuss items from Raymond Geddes for our school carnival prizes before.  They recently sent me a few of their new items to review.  It was so fun to see products I haven’t seen before.  Our very favorite were the Thing 1 and Thing 2 Pop out pens. Here they are popping out of the Cat’s Hat pencil holder my daughter made.

See instructions how to make this Dr. Seuss pencil can here.


These pens are a huge hit with my kids! Press the button and their heads pop off!  See the video of my son playing with them on Instagram. 


My kids keep these pens in their homework area and play with them when they take a break.  (Makes homework time fun!)


We also have a washi tape (decorative tape) addiction at our house. I have my craft tape collection and my kids all have rolls of their own so you can imagine how excited they were to try these Dr. Seuss mini decorative tape rolls.  They’re already wrapping pencils and adding it to their pencil boxes.  This would be cute to seal envelopes or any variety of crafting.



Raymond Geddes also has Dr. Seuss elastic bookmarks.  I’ve never seen Dr. Seuss elastic like this.  I’d love to just buy yards of the fabric to make my own crafts.  I would have liked the bookmarks to be a little larger.  It was too tight to actually use on a Dr. Seuss book and pretty tight on my own chapter books.  They would be darling as headbands  but again, they were too tight. We did use the Horton band as a hair band on my niece’s pony tail and I think I’ll keep using it that way.  The elastic bookmarks are a great idea. These just need about 2 more inches added to work well.



These are my favorite finds at Raymond Geddes: (Click here to see all of their Dr. Seuss products.) Current deal (Nov. 2014) Free Shipping On Orders > $79! Use Promo Code: 14FS79

1. The Thing 1 &2 Pop Out pens
2. The Grinch pen
3. The mini Dr. Seuss decorative tape rolls
4. The elastic Dr. Seuss bookmarks
5. The fluffy Truffula Tree pens


I’ve ordered some prizes for our school Dr. Seuss carnival in the past and will again this next spring.  Here are my favorites to use at our Fishing Pond and egg hunt booths. These would be great classroom prizes or party favors too.
1. The Dr. Seuss book erasers (my daughter collects take-apart erasers so she snagged these to add to her collection).
2. Dr. Seuss mini highlighters. They are about 3 inches tall and super cute.
3. A variety of Dr. Seuss bookmarks to encourage kids to keep reading!
4. The mini double sided Dr. Seuss stampers. (Fit perfectly in our Green Eggs & Ham Egg Hunt. A little tricky to get the individual wrappers off).
5. The Dr. Seuss pencil grippers.
6. More Dr. Seuss style erasers.
*Disclosure: Raymond Geddes sent me a few of their new products to review.  I was not paid for this review.  I have purchased Dr. Seuss items from them previously and am impressed with their quality.
As an Amazon Affiliate I receive a small percentage of sales made from Amazon links. I am not a Raymond Geddes affiliate but some of their items are sold on Amazon so I'm sharing them below (my favorites are only available at the Raymond Geddes site).

Dinosaurs, Geocaching, Craft and Books

My kids love their dinosaur books. We have a whole book bin full of just dinosaur books.  I like reading the picture books with them and my older son loves exploring the non-fiction encyclopedia style books to learn all their scientific names and facts.

We recently visited Dinosaur Land (otherwise known as Vernal, Utah). It was a perfect time to pull out the books and do a simple dinosaur craft.

We saw this idea at the Natural History Museum in Vernal.  They had one to use at the front desk so my kids asked to make our own at home. 

We made these dinosaur pencils quickly by wrapping a rubber band around the tiny toy dinosaurs.  This was easy enough for my kids to do by themselves. They tried to find matching color rubber bands and pencils. This herd of dinosaurs looks really cool in our homework caddy.  I love that the kids can still take the toys off to play with.

 

Try making some of your own. Just grab a bag of toy dinosaurs, some rubber bands and pencils and band them together.

DINOSAUR BOOKS

Here are a few Dinosaur books my kids like.

(*Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you purchase items from the links below I receive a small percentage of the sale. I always recommend finding books at your library to check them out, then if you’d like to buy them, Amazon is one option. I appreciate any purchases through these links.)

Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs is one my daughter brought home from her school library. It is a fun version by Mo Willems. He is one of our favorite authors lately.  And another vintage favorite from my childhood is Danny and the Dinosuar by Syd Hoff.

GEOCACHING 
Our family has been Geocaching for the past year.  We found a few in Dinosaur Land (Vernal, Utah).  The Utah Field House of Natural History Museum had one of our favorite Geocaches we’ve ever found.  The coordinates led us to a series of clues we needed to find in each exhibit then we took the answers to the front desk for a final clue leading us to the treasure box cache filled with fun Utah souvenirs.

Geocaching Books
My daughter loves the Box Car Children series and #131, The Box that Watch Found, is about them finding a geocache and joining a geocache club then solving the mystery of disappearing geocaches.  Ben and the Geocache Treasure is a great picture book to introduce younger kids to geocaching.

There is an official Geocaching app for phones that will help you locate geocaches around town, but for hiking we decided to get an official satellite based GPS (hand held, not for car dashes) that can be used in areas without phone service.  We plugged it into our computer and downloaded a list of caches from Geocaching.com.  We purchased this Magellan GPS from Amazon. 

Remember to take little prizes or tokens to trade if the geocache has items for that.  We like to leave little Dr. Seuss prizes (erasers, ornaments, pencils and more).  We will share more of our geocaching adventures in the future.
Do any of you geocache or have kids who love dinosaurs?

The Lorax and Cat in the Hat Pencil Cans {Craft}

My kids and I made these Lorax and Cat in the Hat pencil holders out of recycled cans to celebrate the upcoming birthday of Dr. Seuss and the new Lorax movie release on March 2.

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These are hands-on kid crafts that take 5-10 minutes to make.

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How to:
Find orange and yellow felt then trace the shape of the Lorax in orange (or light brown) then cut out. Use yellow felt to cut out the mustache and eyebrows. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Glue the pieces together and glue googly eyes on. I also used a permanent marker to add details.
Cut out scrapbook paper or cardstock to cover the can, then glue the Lorax on.

I just used yellow pencils and drew zigzag lines around them with a black permanent marker.  We tried the turquoise fur glued to the top first. It looked great but it didn’t stick well. You could probably try hot glue but I wanted my kids to do this – so we ripped the fur off and I let them wad up wrapping tissue paper. They glued the balls of tissue paper to the top and they worked perfectly.  I also tried using it as a vase and it looked cute with flowers.

My inspiration (I combined these two ideas)
I love this felt Lorax by Maggie at Smashed Peas and Carrots. She also has a pattern and a game to go with it. I found this via Pinterest. I like her movie version of the Lorax. Mine above is more based off the book.

I also saw these great Truffula Tree Pencils at the Zakka Life by Jessica.

This is the felt Lorax storyboard I made years ago.

We really needed these pencil holders for our homework table (these would look great in a classroom too). I can never find a pencil when I need one so both these cans will stay at our homework station.  My son loved coloring the stripes for the Cat in the Hat can.

How to:
Cut white card stock to cover the can. Draw stripes on with a pencil and tell your child which sections to color red. Then have them trace the lines with black marker. Glue the paper to cover the can.

Now hold the paper to let the glue set for a few minutes. Trace a 1 inch circle around the can on the felt. Cut the felt out.  Add glue to the bottom of the can and add the felt to the can. This will be the hat brim (and make it soft to put on tables).


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I hope you have fun trying out this quick DIY Dr. Seuss Craft!

LORAX APPS:
With the movie coming out you can check out the two free apps from Universal Studios. Kids will love them. The Official Lorax App lets you hold the screen over your mouth to look like a mustache. The Lorax’s mouth moves when you talk.
The movement is pretty jumpy, even after we adjusted the microphone sensitivity, but my son doesn’t care (and hey, it’s FREE!). This is fun to use while reading the book, or just to talk to each other and pretend you’re the Lorax.


This video is only 5 seconds. See how it works. Get The Lorax Free App here. “I am the Lorax, I Speak for the Trees.”
The newer app is the Lorax Truffula Shuffula. It is similar to Bejeweled Blitz (which I love) but it is more kid friendly with great truffula graphics and fun sounds.  I’ve had it a few days and it has frozen up 3 times so far so I hope they fix the glitch, but otherwise a great FREE app.

Check out The Lorax Garden, game app for kids created by Oceanhouse Media. This game is only 99 cents and is another great one to play while you explore the story.
And I can’t wait for The Lorax movie to be released Friday, March 2. Click here to see a helpful review by a mom on Today’s Mama. She says there are five musical numbers in the movie. The trailers look funny and have excellent graphics. I can’t wait to take my kids next week.

Dr. Seuss Thing 1 Thing 2 Paper Bag Puppet Printable

I'm so excited for Nicole to share this Dr. Seuss craft today. I can't believe she free-handed the Thing 1 and Thing 2 heads to create these amazing puppets.  Remember to check out the Dr. Seuss party she hosted, also featured on obSEUSSed. 

We are swapping blogs today, each sharing kid crafts. Visit her blog, My Everything Else, to see the activity I created to go with the Berenstain Bear book 'Inside Outside Upside Down' and look around at her other fun posts while you are there.

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Thanks Victoria for having me! I'm Nicole with My Everything Else. I have four kids, including identical twins, and stay busy writing, blogging and working from home, (in addition to everything else).

Today I am so excited to share with you Thing 1 and Thing 2 Paper Bag Puppets!

When I was planning my twins first birthday party, I combed the internet for Thing 1/Thing 2 crafts and party activities. When I couldn't find what I was looking for, I decided to make my own.

 

I thought I'd share them with you!

Gather your supplies: 

• Paper bags (I found RED ones at Hobby Lobby)
• Crayons or Markers
• Scissors
• Glue
• Thing 1/Thing 2 Printable. (Download and print.)

Thing 1 Thing 2 Puppet      (Free Printable for non-commercial use only)


TO PRINT: Click on the word 'Scribd' in the lower left corner to download. Or click on the first box at the bottom to view fullscreen then copy and paste each page into your document program to print.

Assemble your puppets:

First, print out both pages of the printable. You will need to print both pages for EACH puppet you want to make. Color your pages and cut them out.



 Next, Glue the "half face" under the bag flap as shown below.





 Then glue the "entire face" on top of the paper bag flap, making sure to line up both chins.



 Glue the arms (there is no right or left, you can choose) inside the side fold of the bag.



Finally, choose if you want your Thing to be Thing 1 or Thing 2 and glue the circle on the front of the bag. Tip: if you want to change which Thing your puppet is, tape it instead of gluing it.

Turkey Pinecone Craft and Thanksgiving Books

Happy Thanksgiving!
I am so grateful for books and crafts in my family's life. This little pinecone turkey is one of our favorite Thanksgiving crafts we use as a table decoration.


To make these you’ll need:

• Pinecones (we grabbed ours from our backyard)
• Craft feathers
• Yellow, 1 inch pom poms (for the head)
• Google Eyes (2)
• Red construction paper (cut little squiggle to attach to beak)
• Orange Pipe Cleaner, we used about 1 inch for the beak then folded in half
• Orange foam mat ( really makes 1 huge foot for stability but cut it to look like 2)

I used a hot glue gun to make it last longer. The kids can set  the feathers in place without touching the glue area. The same with the pop pom head and placing the pinecone onto the foam feet. You can always let the kids use craft glue and let them try to put it together themselves – depending on their age.



We made these a few years ago and they’ve held up nicely. You can stick little name cards in the pinecones for a place marker at the Thanksgiving table.

Here are a few of our favorite Thanksgiving picture books:
I love the colorful graphics and the easy to understand text in Thanksgiving Day by Gail Gibbons.
 
Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks, by Margaret Sutherland, reminds kids about the simple things they can be grateful for.


And this was the first year we read 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, by Dav Pilkey.
I’ll admit I don’t think I was ready to introduce vegetarianism to my kids the night before Thanksgiving. My daughter said “Oh, that’s the turkey we eat at Thanksgiving?” Great, now I’m going to have her picturing a live turkey on the table gobbling (groveling) for its life. A little like the Simpson episode where Lisa Simpson pictures the lamb on the table bleating “Don’t eat me.”  Nothing against vegetarians. My sister-in-law pulls out her tofurkey every year. Everyone can eat what they want but I just didn’t want to introduce that concept to my kids at this stage.
 
Anyway the book was still cute and had fun illustrations and a silly rhyme to tell the story of saving turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy some turkey! And some books!
I'd love to know what you are thankful for this year. Leave a comment below.