Going Green with Green Eggs and Ham

Friday of our super fun Seuss week included Green Eggs and Ham.  In the morning, we ate green eggs and ham.  Delicious! Thank you to the Ms. Mindi and the Weigums.  The children LOVED it! Of course, we read the famous story.  Then, we did a graph of if we liked Green Eggs and Ham or not.  Most kids did!

Then, we did a rewrite of the story Green Eggs and Ham.  The students had to think of something they didn't like to eat and make some rhymes to go with!  They turned out great! The students had to work really hard on the rhymes.

We not only wore green for Green Eggs and Ham.  In the afternoon, we talked about "going green" for our environment.  We read Dr. Seuss's story The Lorax.  The Lorax has an important ecology lesson about protecting Earth's natural resources.  We read so many great Dr. Seuss books this week.  One of my favorite activities we did this week was writing book recommendations for our favorite Seuss stories.  So much thinking, writing, speaking, and tech-ing went into this project.  First, the students had to formulate their opinions and write a book report.

The second graders went a step beyond the book report.  We recorded their book recommendation in front of the green screen and then added sections of the book behind them.   Here are just a couple examples.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Suess!

  Thursday we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by participating in a school wide read in.  The first half hour of school all the students lined the hallways and just read.  Even the teachers and our principal dropped everything to read.  The Connected Combo wore their unusual hats to school Thursday to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat.   Our Scholastic News was all about Dr. Seuss.  We learned many interesting facts about the famous author.  For example, Dr. Seuss collected silly hats because he thought wearing silly hats gave him funny ideas to write about!  It must have worked because he published over 40 books in his lifetime. We had special birthday cupcakes in celebration of Dr. Seuss.

Later in the day, after reading both The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, we did our daily graph.  Click here to hear the book rapped in 6 minutes. At the end of The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss asks if you would tell your mom about the adventure if it happened to you.  The kids answered the question in a graph; however, they didn't use their names....in case moms were going to see it!  Instead we used our "Thing" numbers!   Good news, most kids would tell mom!  The children also loved making the guided drawings of the Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Two.  They did a great job listening to directions and being patient with themselves.  I love that the drawings all turned out different but still look "right." Thanks, Miss Crystal for the fun snack, it was really inspiring during art today.

 We also read and discussed the rhymes in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  Dr. Seuss is a master rhymer.  We made our own rhyming hats. The students worked very hard on their rhymes.  I love how they used their tools.  Many students used word family sliders from around our classroom.  They also used the app Word Wizard.  Word Wizard is a moveable alphabet for $2.99.  The app says the words as the students build them.  It also lets them  know if words are spelled correctly.  So students could build and try words with the word family and check their spelling.  Awesome.  Many students found their hats were getting too big for their desks and had to move to the floor.

It was such a great day celebrating an adored author and illustrator.  Happy 113th birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Wacky Wednesday ~ Seuss Day 3

Backwards clothes and inside out?  A fist in the tree? A shoe on the wall and our schedule written backwards?  It must be Dr. Seuss's Wacky Wednesday!  What a fun book!  This Wacky Wednesday students walked in and were told to do the math page at their desks.  They couldn't see the paper and we trying to tell me it wasn't there.  I kept repeating the directions, "Do the math paper at your desk."  Finally, a student noticed the wackiness.  The paper was taped under the desk.  I've never heard students giggle so much doing a worksheet!  Ha!  Next, the students went on a wacky hunt....they listed all the wacky things in our room!

 Of course, we took a close look at the book.  We put it up on the document camera so that we had a full view of all the wackiness.  We had to read the book in 15 minute chunks because the children were looking so closely for all the strange things hidden in each illustration.

Later in the day we read Dr. Seuss's Hop on Pop and had some pop and popcorn.  We also made whirly birds to celebrate Wacky Wednesday.  On our whirly birds we wrote five important "wh" words: who, what, when, where, and why.  Then, we would throw the whirly bird in the air, as it twirled down we had to see if we could spell the "wh" word called out.  Wacky Wednesday spelling lesson for sure!