Dr. Seuss Activities

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Cross-curricular activities for 15 Dr. Seuss books, including The Foot Book, Dr. Seuss’ ABC, If I Ran the Zoo, The Lorax, and more!

The Foot Book  

  • Paint with the kids’ feet and create your own Foot Book.
  • Count the number of feet in your class, then recount by 2s.
  • Play Twister.
  • Graph shoes according to characteristics.
  • Pile shoes and have a race to see who can get their shoes on first and tied.
  • Make a pattern with the kids’ shoes.

Dr. Seuss’s ABC 

  • Alphabet dot-to-dot worksheets.
  • Matching games with upper and lower case letters.
  • Matching beginning letter sounds to pictures/objects.
  • ABC Bingo
  • Line up in ABC order by first name and last name.
  • Make an Alphabet class book.
  • Read other ABC books.

The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins 

  • Count to 500 by ones, twos, fives, and tens.
  • Create math problems to see which combinations make 500.
  • Bring a collection of hats to graph.
  • Discuss hats worn by people in various occupations.
  • Design and make your own hats.
  • Using tally marks, count the number of:  girls in your class, cars that go by the school, pencils in your class, etc.

Green Eggs and Ham 

  • Make green eggs and ham in your class.
  • List green foods.
  • Rhyming Bingo
  • Discuss animals that lay eggs other than the chicken.
  • Eggshell Art

Yertle the Turtle 


  • Play follow the leader, keeping the same leader all the time–how does that make the rest of the kids feel being bossed around?
  • Look for turtles in the Secret Garden.

The King’s Stilts 

  • Make a pair of stilts out of coffee cans for each student.
  • Pretend you are the king or queen of a country.  Write about your responsibilities and the fun parts of your job.

The Butter Battle Book 

  • Decide if you want to be a Yook of a Zook and defend your reasons
  • Eat bread with the butter side up or down depending on the above choice
  • Discuss reasons for war and the effects on all involved.

Horton Hears a Who 

  horton

  • Put a speck of dust on a microscope slide and examine it.
  • Order pictures/objects in by small, smaller, smallest.
  • Discuss the value of all people regardless of differences.
Glyph Activity:  Horton Hears a Who Glyph with Writing Extensions
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Horton Hatches the Egg 

  • Create some new animals by “crossing” two–What would you get if you crossed and alligator with a giraffe?  Make your own combinations and draw them.
  • Discuss the qualities that made Horton a good choice to sit on the egg.

The Shape of Me and Other Stuff 

  • Color/Shape Bingo
  • Show silhouettes of objects/animals and have kids name the shapes.
  • Sort various shapes of gum and then graph it and then eat it.

Bartholomew and the Oobleck 

  • Make oobleck.
  • Discuss your favorite kind of weather.
  • Make a weather graph.
  • Practice reading thermometers.
  • Brainstorm “weather” words and then categorize them.

Hop on Pop 

  • Rhyming Bingo
  • One student says a word and another says a word that rhymes with it, and a third adds another, etc.  See how far your class can go.

If I Ran the Zoo 

  • Discuss responsibilities of a zoo keeper (Dr. Seuss’s dad was one).
  • Using clay, make animals real and imaginary.
  • Design a new animal for the zoo.

The Lorax 

  • Discuss the importance of trees for people and animals.
  • Design a poster to discourage the destruction of the rain forest.
  • Plant a tree.

Also see: The Lorax Theme: Lessons, Activities, and Printables

The Cat in the Hat 

  • Discuss “home” rules for being at home when parents are gone.  Do all your students know their addresses in case an emergency occurs while they are there alone?
  • List things you can do on rainy days in the house.
  • Count and list objects that the cat can balance.  Have a relay race balancing an eraser on the heads of students.
  • Would the story be different if the Cat in the Hat told it?  Write it from his perspective.
  • Ask students to design a machine that would clean up their rooms.

By: Kyla Case

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2 Responses to Dr. Seuss Activities

  1. Gale Hoeke MSE September 28, 2011 at 9:32 pm #

    La Merced Elementary has a Read Across America festival for a full week every year. Our committee is always looking for new fun ideas that don’t take long. Our teachers will definitely enjoy these activities scaled to all elementary ages. THANKS

  2. heidy February 6, 2012 at 7:23 pm #

    These activities are great! I love Dr. Seuss. We will be having a Dr. Seuss’s Birthday club at my after school program. For those of you doing any Horton activity (LOVE creating your animal combos!) I think the 5 Sense Egg would make an excellent accompaniment. You can create a few creatures of your own before hand in a few of the eggs and watch your kids’ eyes light up.

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