Firstgraderoundup : Dr. Seuss

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Dr. Seuss week is one of my favorites in the classroom (read about it here) and I'm sad I'll be missing out on it this year...so we brought some Dr. Seuss fun home this week!

Green Eggs and Ham Rhyme Match

My preschooler loves matching games so we pulled out my rhyming match cards that go with Green Eggs and Ham and have played a few games already this week! Even for a preschooler, this game was so helpful in practicing our phonemic awareness and listening for rhyming sounds as mommy read the words!

Rhyming Hats

We read The Cat in the Hat. Then, Cooper loved seeing how "tall" we could make the cat's hat by adding more rhyming words!

And then we Daddy came home from the gym, Cooper begged him to join our game! So we played a family game of "pass the pen."

These hats are also great in the classroom for pass the pen, independent practice for stations or doing a carousel activity whole group!

Dr. Seuss Snacks

The best part about celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday at home this year was these fun snacks! My little guy is went crazy when we made these snacks this year! :)

All of these activities and much much more can be found in my Dr. Seuss packet.

Whitney

We are back from our February break and celebrating Dr. Seuss in first grade!

Of course, I have my favorite Seuss activities that I do every year, so I will not rehash those again. You can read up on my old favorites HERE.

This year, I added a few new activities to my Seusstastic Rhymes Packet. We focused a little more on characteristics of Dr. Seuss' writing. Here are our top 3 ways to write like Dr. Seuss!

1. Creative Writing

Dr. Seuss is famous for his creative, imaginative writing! We introduced this idea by reading and studying his imagination in books like To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, and The Cat in the Hat. Because let's face it: You have to be a creative writer to come up with some ideas like that! We then did our own creative writing in our journals by writing about what it might be like if WE ran the zoo or what would happen if the Cat in the Hat visited OUR house! It wasn't fancy....just plain ole journal writing...but they turned out so so cute! In fact, I wish I would've had them write it on the "cute" writing prompt paper from my Seuss Packet because I would've loved hanging these in the hallway!

2. Wacky Words

One of my favorite things about reading Dr. Seuss stories is his love for wacky words! You just can't help but giggle when he writes them! This year, we read a few of his books like Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to listen for wacky, nonsense words. Then, during Readers' Workshop, my first graders worked with a buddy to read a Dr. Seuss book together and look for wacky words. We shared our wacky words during share time!

Then, we worked on reading real and wacky words from One Fish, Two Fish... and sorting them into real or wacky. There was even a "blank" card for the firsties to make up their own wacky word--which they LOVED doing!

And on a more serious note....I really put a lot of stock into this activity this year because of my school's focus on the DIBELS assessment. I am finding that a lot of my readers struggle decoding nonsense words. And while I used to believe that it didn't matter because real readers need to **make sense** of words as they read anyways...I'm beginning to think that reading nonsense words DOES matter. As we've studied our newest phonics program through the help of our district literacy coach, we have found that as readers begin reading multi-syllabic words, the syllables they have to break words into to read are often nonsense words. For example...

basketball --> bas * ket * ball

In order to decode this word, the reader HAS to be able to decode nonsense words!

Since this revelation, we've been working more on nonsense words and I'll be adding a brand new packet I've been using to help us with this in my store soon!

3. Rhyming

Rhyming books are just so fun to read! And Dr. Seuss is one of the BEST at this! During our author study, we read and listened for rhyming words in Green Eggs and Ham and highlighted the rhyming words in our close reading (read about last year's adventure with this for more details and pictures). We added this final type of Seusstastic writing to our anchor chart...

Then, we brushed up on our own rhyming skills in readers' workshop...

And next week, we will be tackling writing some poetry like Dr. Seuss!

Catch all of these activities and much much more in my Dr. Seuss Packet!

Whitney

Yesterday was Dr. Seuss' birthday and we celebrated in style! By the time my first graders come to me, they've already had the green eggs and ham feast and "fun" stuff in kindergarten. So we do some different activities that are still fun and engaging and a little more first grade appropriate!

{affiliate links have been added in this post. The small percentage of proceeds go to support this website and my chocolate addiction!}

Rhyming Sentences

Monday morning we read Hop on Pop and brainstormed rhyming words from the book as we read. Then, we became authors like Dr. Seuss and wrote rhyming sentences just as his book is patterned. In first grade, we did the first 2 together, then they did 2 with their group as my intern and I walked around to check and then they wrote 2 on their own after they were checked. This was such a *fun* review on rhymes and writing complete sentences. It was also an easy way to review our mechanics {capitals, sight words, spaces and periods} for some of my low babies {which is why this activity is great for kinder through 2nd because it can be whole group, productive groups, independent work, or a combo of all of them like we did!

They absolutely loved coming up with silly sentences like Dr. Seuss writes!

Love the bat poop one this group came up with! :)

Antonym Opposites!

Monday afternoon, we talked about antonyms. I'm not sure who to give the credit to for this story. I kinda think one of my college professors told us this story, but I can't find anybody to back me up on that. So maybe I made it up. That's totally possible, too, since I can tell some cRaZy stories!

....but anyways...the antonym story goes like this:
Antonym means opposites. Have you ever found an ant hill before? What happens if you accidentally--or on purpose--step on the ant hill??? The ants go EVERYWHERE! They run away in opposite directions screaming, "ANTonyms!!!!"

I know what you're thinking. That's the silliest story you've ever heard. And it is. But year after year, it works. When I hear the word antonym, all I can think about are ants running in opposite directions. Silly as it is, my firsties remember what antonym means because of that crazy story.

And I *promise* this relates to Dr. Seuss....We read The Foot Book, by Dr. Seuss, which is all about...OPPOSITES!

We found the pairs of opposites as we read and charted them on our antonyms chart.

Then they "paired up" and traced two feet. With their partners, they came up with a pair of antonyms to write and illustrated. We posted our pairs of antonyms on our big foot in the hallway!

Yes, the big foot is a bit wrinkled, but it is several years old....and it just gets rolled up and stored until the next year so I guess I shouldn't be surprised!

I loved this one...thought it was so original!

I have some opposite cards included in the packet that go in my ABC literacy station. Partners work to reinforce opposites by matching pairs and recording them on our antonym feet recording page!

So much fun these past two days and so much more from this fun little Seuss packet that we didn't have time to squeeze in!

Whitney

I've had a bit of writer's block the last week or so. So here's a hodge podge of #allthethings in the world of first grade lately!

Hurt Hearts

Usually, I do this lesson at the beginning of the year, but for some reason I didn't. And now, 2 weeks after Valentine's Day, this lesson was necessary. My firsties have gotten a bad case of the meanies! This truly is one of the sweetest classes I've ever had and they really love each other dearly. But I think they last few weeks we've graduated to a brother/sister relationship between my firsties. Ya know, cat fighting, name calling, I love you, I hate you kinda stuff???

We sat in our class meeting circle on the carpet and read Chrysanthemum. I had made a beautiful clean red heart....and forgot to take a picture....because this was not a preplanned activity. This was a "Okay, everybody stop what you're doing and come to the carpet right now" kinda lesson. You know the kind.

Every time one of Chrysanthemum's classmates laughed or said mean things to Chrysanthemum we crushed her heart. The heart got passed around in our circle so everyone had a chance. There is actually not enough for all 25 of my firsties to squish the heart. So when we finished the book, we talked about other things friends or siblings have said that crush our hearts. Therapy session 101!

At the end, our heart looked like this...

Usually, when this is a preplanned activity, I use butcher paper to make a large heart and we each sign bandaids promising to be caring and to help repair our friends' hearts when they are hurt. But I didn't have room on my impromptu construction paper heart! However, I use this same lesson with my preschool Sunday Schoolers at church and this is what their response page looks like after the lesson.

You can find this lesson and other love & Valentine's lessons in my Love One Another packet. Perfect all year long!

Math Games

I've super pumped about my newest pack because it is WAAAAAAAY overdue! I've been using these tried and true number sense games for the last 9 years, and it was about time I updated the Comic Sans versions I had from my first year...*wince!*

Here's the Game of Double Compare from this packet from a few weeks ago...so still the less exciting version of handouts... It's basically double war. Each partner draws 2 cards, adds the numbers and then they compare the sums. The partner with the greatest sum, keeps the card.

And for my low babies, they just played Compare with me in a small group while the others played Double Compare with partners. We used cubes to build the numbers to make it easier to compare! The packet has cards with ten frames and without for differentiation as well!

9 games, 20 total differentiated version. Posters, I can cards, instruction posters, playing cards, and student recording sheets! The only thing it doesn't have ready for you are dice! Print and play. It's that simple!

Seasons Writing

After a short break to research and write about presidents for President's Day, we are back to trucking along in our Weather Unit! This week we started researching seasons. We researched Winter and Summer this week and 2 next week.

Unlike last year, I decided to chart the details for each season within categories. And this actually was for a more important reason other than my OCD...

We've been doing informative writing for a while. And while most of my firsties could write an informative paragraph in their sleep, their detail sentences are quite random.

Like this...

So, we've been focusing on grouping related detail sentences together instead of randomly writing whatever about a large topic. Having a "categorized" anchor chart REALLY helped. We were able to easily see during share time who had facts from all over the place versus kids who wrote all of their details about weather together and animals together, and so on...

During share time, we highlighted and color coded the related details.

And while my lower writers didn't quite get this independently, my on and higher kiddos did really, really well. And now I can totally see how much easier the transition to writing multi-paragraphs will be for these kiddos!