Dr. Seuss Activities

Also see our Celebrate Dr. Seuss Theme Page

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 

• 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.

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

Also see our Celebrate Dr. Seuss Theme Page

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