20 Dr. Seuss Activities to Fill Your House with Stacks of Books

March 2, Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! His books are scattered all over our house.  We will be celebrating by reading several of his books, playing games and munching on Seuss style snacks. I'm excited to share several activities and snacks with my son's kindergarten class in the morning.

"Fill your house with stacks of books...in all the crannies and all the nooks." This quote is from the movie, In Search of Dr. Seuss.  Dr. Seuss knew the average kid would pick up a book and be hooked. It has been the inspiration for my blog.  I really want children to be surrounded by books at home.   We have well over 1,000 books. I am constantly trying to sort through them and share with others. We donate many to the Burmese refugee children we work with in Salt Lake. We've held book drives to collect and donate more books for them. My children love helping pass out the books.

This is one reason I haven't been blogging as much in the last year.  I've been "in the trenches" trying to spread literacy instead of behind my computer blogging as much. I still share quick ideas and activities on Instagram but I don't have the time to share more details on my blog for now.

I'm also our school PTA president this year.  I'm currently helping with our readathon which has been a Dr. Seuss theme the past five years.  This year we have a new mascot so we are doing a fantasy reading theme. I'm helping plan a medieval festival to celebrate all the extra reading our students do.

Image by Kellie Ungritch for D. Elementary

I hope you all are reading more with your children or classroom. Share a Dr. Seuss book today to celebrate his birthday. 

If you're looking for some additional fun ways to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, check out 20 of my favorite obSEUSSed with Dr. Seuss activities, crafts, snacks and party ideas here.

Plus I’ve collected more than 1,500 Dr. Seuss ideas on several Pinterest boards.  Follow these boards for Dr. Seuss parties, classrooms, crafts, Grinchmas, activities and more.


Start filling your house with stacks of books.
We buy books at yard sales, thrift shops, local books stores and online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We love to give and receive books as gifts. We've also done a book exchange at church where we have a cupboard we bring a book to leave and take a book to keep. I'm also excited to start working on building my own Dr. Seuss Little Free Library house for my yard this summer.

If you don't like books taking up a lot of space at your home long term, make sure to rotate books from your local library.  Sometimes owning too many books can be overwhelming and my kids get used to seeing them and aren't as interested in reading them.  A new stack of books borrowed from the library gets them excited.  Whatever method you choose, just make sure to keep books accessible for children.  Help them find books they are interested in and get them excited about reading!  

I'd love to know how you're celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday. Leave a comment below or leave a link to your blog if you've shared ideas online.

Follow me on Instagram (@reading_refuge) and Facebook: obSEUSSed.

Pre-packaged Lit Kits Simplify and Engage

I recently came across this wonderful company called Engage with the Page. Two reading specialists, and moms, Michelle Roderick, M.Ed. and Emily Swan, Ph.D. are passionate about helping children love reading so they created DiscoverLitKits. Each pre-packaged literacy kit centers around a theme with books and a bag full of research-based reading activities to help parents and teachers engage children with reading. 

The kits come in this clear bag to keep all of the activities together and make them easily transportable to take in the car, to the doctor, grandma’s house or at school.
 
ENGAGING ACTIVITIES
My son and I played with this Bugs DiscoverLitKit, for PreK-K, for the past two weeks. The focus book was The Butterfly by Anna Milbourne and Cathy Shimmen. There were so many activities to go along with it that we could explore the book differently each day. The activities included math, writing, poetry, word study, vocabulary, discussion cards, art, science, and fluency. They took from 5-15 minutes each to complete so it worked well for my kindergartner’s attention span to do a Lit Kit activity each day, then let him pick a few books of his choice for reading time.

I loved that the book had teaching tip stickers placed on the cover and on each page to give the parent or teacher additional ideas of engaging the child with the book. I normally try to ask more questions as we read books but their tip stickers gave me ideas I hadn’t thought of.


My son really loved the interactive, engaging parts of the Lit Kit.  We played the Ladybug Math Mat several times.  He would roll the die and place pom poms on his half of the ladybug then I would roll and place pom poms on my half. Then he would write the equation down on a piece of paper. He didn’t want to stop and filled the entire page with equations.


He also loved the art project and using the magnifying glass to search for words in the book. There were also colored butterfly stickers we used for several activities.
TIME SAVER
As a mom, I try to come up with several ways to explore a book, through crafts or reading techniques but it takes time to put it all together and most days we just simply read a book cover to cover while asking a few questions. This kit put everything together so you could just pull it out and start using it right away, giving you hours of engaging activities to do with your child. This would be great for busy parents or teachers to add to their library.
Engage with the Page has been developing these scientifically-based DiscoverLitKits for years and have made sure they are kid tested and mom approved too. They have just started to sell them at local boutiques in Utah and now offer some online at www.engagewiththepage.com.
Kits vary in price and they do have a subscription program available so you can try a different themed kit each month. When you add up the cost of the book, supplies, and the time it saves you from having to research and create your own supplemental activities to go with books, these kits are worth the money. Especially because you'll want to re-use it with future children or in classrooms year after year.
Update- they now have DIY lit kits where you can buy the resource kits and print some parts out if you already have the book.

*Disclosure: I was given this DiscoverLitKit to review but all experiences and opinions are my own as we explored this literacy program.

Are You My Mother? {Printable Matching Game}

To celebrate Mother's Day this week we are reading the book Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
My children giggle at the silly story line (The bird is in search of his mother. Is the cow his mother? Is the airplane his mother?). I love the repetition in this book. It helps my children feel comfortable guessing the words as they learn to read. The text is predictable and they can look at the simple illustrations for hints.
I created this worksheet so you could have children color it, then draw lines to the matches or try cutting the animals out to use as a matching game.

LITERACY ACTIVITY:
Print the free worksheet below to have cards for a matching game for the children’s book Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman.
Are You My Mother Worksheet

To Print: Click the word ‘Scribd’ in the lower left corner of the image, or click here.
Free Printable for non-commercial use only. I found the images from various free clipart sources on Google to create this worksheet.

TO PLAY: Cut out the animals in a rectangle card shape.  I hand wrote the names of the animals on the back of the mother cards. I asked my son to turn over a blank card (with a baby animal), then he would read the words to find the matching mother.

Happy Mother's Day!

Reading Backwards for World Read Aloud Day

I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! by Dr. Seuss is one of our favorite books to read aloud. There are so many ways you can practice reading.


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BACKWARDS:
Lately we’ve been reading many of our books backwards. Start with the last word in the book. My son is still learning his sight words and beginning blending sound words.  As we read his simple phonics books with a few words on the page I like to challenge him to read it backwards. This way, he can’t just guess what word is next based on pictures or context alone.
My son thinks it is so silly to read the words backwards.  It keeps things interesting and keeps the focus on learning the words.
TAP:
Another tip I like for beginning readers is to just point under the word if your child pronounced it wrong. Let them know this is the sign you make when you want them to try it again.  I don’t like to interrupt my kids while they are reading. If they make a simple sound wrong I just tap under the word, wait for them to try it again and if they are still struggling I’ll remind them to sound it out. Sometimes it helps to use a pencil to point.

ALOUD
Make sure to read aloud to your children and have them read aloud to you. Once my daughter started reading chapter books quietly in her head I realized she was skipping over the challenging words or thinking of the pronunciation incorrectly for a character’s name throughout the entire book. When she would tell me about the book I realized this was a problem.  I told her if she finds a challenging word she can ask me about it or write it on her bookmark to ask me later.
WORLD READ ALOUD DAY: March 7
Worldwide at least 793 million people remain illiterate. Imagine a world where everyone can read... Find out more about the World Read Aloud Day challenge and share what you are doing at LitWorld.org.

Take this day to cherish the fact you can read and share that love of reading with your children.

Guess How Much I Love You Flash Cards

I created some simple heart-shaped flash cards of high frequency words for one of my favorite valentine children's books; ‘Guess How Much I Love You’ by Sam McBratney.


We have the story time or classroom size version that is about 18 inches tall. We also own the board book. This is a classic that you’ll want in your home library or classroom. The pictures are simple and relaxing and the text is memorable.

As I read books with my kindergartner I like to have him read the high frequency words while I read the more challenging words. It works best if I review the words before we read the book. Then he is familiar with them and doesn’t struggle so much during the story. 



For this book we reviewed the words, then I had him find the matching word in the book the second time we read it.

FREE PRINTABLE FLASH CARDS (for non-commercial use only)
I printed mine on pink paper.
Guess How Much Love Cards Obseussed

You can download the free flashcards by clicking the lower left corner of the box ‘Scribd’. Or click here for a link to all my Free Printables.

You could also let your child use the hearts to create a valentine by using a glue-stick and construction paper.

Happy Valentine’s Day!


Check out more great blog-land Valentine ideas:

Top 25 Favorite Children’s Book Characters go Back-To-School

As my son heads off to Kindergarten this year I’ve checked out some books from the library and read some we have at home to prepare him for his new adventure at school.

Here are 25 books with familiar characters to help your child prepare for school this season. Just click on a book for more details.


Disclosure: Check these books out at your library, if you like them you can purchase from clicking the link and I receive a very small percentage from Amazon.
Updated: 8/19, I found another great Back to School book list at Momma Reads





I shared this info here, where you can see more back to School ideas: