Fun and Learning with the Cat in the Hat

As I mentioned in my previous post, The Cat in the Hat is a current favorite around here. So I knew that I wanted to spend most of our time during Dr. Seuss week with the cat and his friends. A quick search on Pinterest revealed that there are a lot of talented and creative people out there who are also inspired by The Cat in the Hat. I found enough activities to last us for two days, including some great printables and templates that are available to download for free. I chose what I thought would fit best with our kids, their attention spans, and the skills we’ve been working on.

We started by re-reading the book together. At Emelie’s suggestion, she and I took turns reading pages and Peter followed along. Her reading skills are developing so quickly now that she’s starting to feel more confident. It really is a joy to watch!

“We can have lots of good fun that is funny…”

Then we moved on to a Cat in the Hat rhyming board game that I found here. It’s a simple concept – answer a question about rhyming words correctly and you get to roll the die and move ahead. Our kids are pretty good and rhyming, so there wasn’t much challenge in this game, but it was fun, and Staffan was off that day so we could all play together!

printable rhyming board game

Cat in the Hat game

rhyming game card

 

“And I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2”

When the game was finished (Emelie won!) we did some math review with Thing 1 and Thing 2!
Both Emelie and Peter LOVED this math craft from www.teachwithme.com. I had to create a free account in order to download it, but it was worth it!
The activity is designed for practicing skip counting by 10s but I adapted it a little to fit out kids’ needs. Peter isn’t ready for skip counting quite yet, but he does a great job of counting and he’s learning how to write numbers. So Peter made his Thing 1 and Thing 2 hair counting from 1-10. The download comes with a template to print the strips on blue paper so that they can trace the numbers from 10-100, and simply put them in order. But Emelie has practiced skip counting by 10s for long enough that it would have been very easy for her to just put them in order. And since I was already changing the numbers for Peter’s, I simply cut blue construction paper into strips and let them both write the numbers themselves.

Curling the paper around a pencil to make the wild and crazy Thing 1 and Thing 2 hair was also a huge hit. These went straight onto the refrigerator and they’re bound to be there for a while!

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 1 and Thing 2

 

“So, so, so! I’ll show you another good game that I know!”

On our second Cat in the Hat day we started by making hats like the cat’s! I printed them from A to Z Teacher Stuff, one for Peter with “__at” already printed on the stripes and a blank one for Emelie. Peter did a great job writing in the missing first letters of his favorite “at” family words. He wrote them all independently with the exception of the B, which I wrote in pencil for him to trace. Emeile could choose which word family she wanted on her hat, and she chose “ot” words. She did a great job thinking of and writing words that ended with -ot. Then they colored the stripes and by adding a few strips of paper and a bit of tape – they were cats in hats!

word family hats

Wearing a “cat hat” made everything else just a little bit more fun. We did some more practice all together with word families that are found in the book, then Peter worked on tracing and writing letter Cs (“C” is for Cat) while Emelie tried her hand at a Cat in the Hat word search. She’d never tried a word search before, and I was afraid that some of the backwards and diagonal words might be too difficult, but she really loved it and has me on the look out for more word searches!

Dr Seuss word search

IMG_5241

The pencil works better in your hand, Pete! That’s why we call it handwriting!

cat in the hat handwriting

That’s better!

The word search, along with the letter C handwriting sheet and the extra word family practice were all part of a printable pack that I downloaded here. There were more activities included than I chose to use, and all free downloads! I’m so thankful for the people that take the time to create fun and educational activities and make them freely available to download.

Learning is fun with the Cat and his friends.
Counting and rhyming, the fun never ends.
Thank you for reading about all our fun,
But stay tuned, Dr. Seuss week just isn’t quite done…

 

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