Last week was an important week at school. Dr. Seuss's birthday is one of my favorite days! Teaching middle schoolers doesn't leave a lot of room for me to go all out, but I do try to incorporate something special into my day. I was really inspired this year by our Kindergarten teacher, who really took off with a week packed full of amazing activities.
Wednesday was hat day. Students and staff could pay one dollar and be able to wear a hat to school. To the left you can see the hat brought by one of the fourth grade students. I made sure I put him in the back of the room that day! The money raised went to a charity called Caps 4 Kids.
Most years I use a Dr. Seuss book in my lesson for Read Across America, however, this year, I wanted to try something new. During my language arts classes in the afternoon, I had each student get out a book to read. For the first part of class, they read their books.
Toward the middle of the reading time, I stopped and gave Dr. Seuss trivia giving students the chance to win one of these cute little guys!
I can't for the life of me find the blog where I originally found them, but I was so inspired when I found them, I went out to get the materials right away. You need creme filled chocolate sandwich cookies, white chocolate chips or almond bark, marshmallows, and red candy melts (such as those made by Wilton).
I melted the white chocolate and dipped the cookies the melted chocolate. As those were cooling, I melted the red candy melts. After you dip one end of a marshmallow in the melted candy, you should place the dipped end on top of a dipped cookie. I had to let the marshmallows cool for a little while, so it would be easier to dip the top of the marshmallow.Technically, the Dr. Seuss hat has five stripes, so to be more accurate, I should have dipped the bottom of the cookie in the red candy as well. I did not, however, have enough of the candy melts for this to happen. I did experiment with a few of them, as you can see, but most of the hats had all white bottoms.
After the Dr. Seuss trivia time, I had them read their books for a bit longer. With ten minutes left of class, they got out their journals and wrote about what they had read. They have to write a journal entry every day, so they automatically had something to write about with this activity.
This activity worked best with the fifth and sixth graders. The seventh and eighth graders weren't as impressed with the trivia, or having to read for "that long without stopping."
Later in the afternoon, the entire school met in the cafeteria for hot chocolate and candy canes. Since the cafeteria is right next to the kindergarten room, I grabbed a Dr. Seuss book from her basket to read as they drank. I didn't really look at which book I had grabbed until I got back into the cafeteria: I had grabbed Oh Say, Can You Say? What a tongue twister!
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