Dr. Seuss--10 Apples Up On Top

We recently celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by reading his books all week and doing activities that related.  One of my favorite Dr. Seuss books is 10 Apples Up On Top.  I found that a site that has some really cute Dr. Seuss activities. 

 My favorite was where she took the characters from 10 Apples and let her kids color them and then color or glue red things onto apples.  Then they all got stacked on their heads.  I did this for my kids.  They got to decorate up to 10 apples.  A bunch of them did 10 but some did less.  As for what they used to make them red I had a limited supply there. I let them choose between a red marker, red crayon, red pastel crayon, red tissue paper, and stamping red letters. 

I provided a direct link to just the pictures of the characters in case they got buried in the site among other great ideas.  I personally hate when you have to search and search for one idea you want. 

For the apples I did an image search on Yahoo for  apple clip art.

10 Apples Up On Top Characters:
Dog
Lion
Tiger

To go along with the book I made a magnet center. I copied smaller versions of the characters onto yellow paper.  Then I made smaller versions of the apples on white.  I made 30 apples, so that each character would have 10 apples.  I spent a while coloring, cutting, gluing, and covering each one with contact paper.  You can save yourself at least one step by cutting out apple shapes out of red paper (two if you make it red card stock). Then I put and adhesive magnet on all of them.  The kids really like stacking the apples all different ways.  Its fun to see the creativity come through on this activity.

Not sure if I want to make a separate post for this.  I made a giant Cat in the Hat for the kids to take pictures with.  I had to show it off. :)

The kids made large Cat in the Hat hats.  They did not want to stay up very well for photos. lol

Simple things

So I have created some very unique centers by keeping my eyes and mind open to different creative avenues. 

I saw a post on Pinterest about cutting up a pool noodle and using it with string for a cheap motor development activity.  I bought three noodles for this purpose.  My kids did not like it. So I put them in a box and let the kids explore them as blocks to build with.  This was fun for a time but then they figured out how to shot them at each other by squeezing them hard in their hands and they POP out flying across the room. (Great for an outside activity)  After trying to find a way to get them to stop that I put them away for a few days, to get back out when I found a purpose for these. 

 Well one day someone was playing with toothpicks, putting them into the small holes of a Parmesan cheese container (great fine motor practice), and I realized that toothpicks would potentially be fun to use with these noodle blocks. I tried it out and found that the noodle material was really porous and you could poke the tooth pick in pretty easy. This is now one of my classes favorite center. We have made some pretty crazy things with just these two materials. You do need to caution the kids about poking their fingers in the process.  No one has ever broken the skin but poking has happened. :)

 

This center is a pretty interesting one.  My youngest daughter (9 years old) was giving away this little house and castle we bought her from the Walgreens Pharmacy for Christmas. Now things that my girls want to give away either got to my school or a thrift store. I chose to hold on to these for my class.  When we bought them they came with little furniture and people.  My daughter had lost most of these. The only survivors were a Pegasus and 5-6 pieces of furniture. This was not enough for me to give to the kids so I added some marker lids as a temporary solution until I could find replacements.  The kids loved it to pieces. Then shortly there after my oldest got rid of a Monopoly game (threw it out in the car port and scattered the pieces ALL over. Grrr!).  Well I rescued the little metal player tokens and added them to the Pegasus and furniture.  I took out the marker lids.  The kids loves the metal pieces but requested to have the marker lids back. LOL I am so glad that my daughters cast off toys will entertain my students. It very easy on my shrinking finances. :)