How To... Celebrate the Seussentennial

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2004 by Lindroth, Linda

One hundred years of delightful nonsense yields great classroom and Internet activities

Theodor S. Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was born on March 2, 1904. This year is the 100th anniversary of his birth, and we're celebrating Dr. Seuss with a Seussentennial. Although Dr. Seuss died in 1991, this will be a spectacular birthday celebration for this beloved author and illustrator of children's literature.

Since 1998, The National Education Association has held their Read Across America event to promote the love of reading on March 2.

Join the fun!

Take advantage of this year's Seussentennial to get your students involved in reading, research and nonsense words. Visit www.seussville.com/seuss ville/seussentennial/ to locate the Seussentennial events occurring near you and to download the 100 Ways to Celebrate Dr. Seuss Calendar.

The Seussentennial Imagination Tour began in January. At the website, you can find out how close the Imagination Tour will be to your area. Why not practice mapping the Dr. Seuss way? Display a U.S. map and track the tour's progress as it visits 40 cities across America before it stops in Minneapolis, MN on April 4.

Seuss-oloqy

Dr. Seuss wrote more than 50 books during his career as an author and illustrator. From his first book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (Random House, reissued 1989), to his last book, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! (Random House, 1998), finished after his death, this prolific writer has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers of all ages.

Challenge your students to identify Seuss books and characters from each of the quotations in the reproducible on the next page, and to add their own quotations to the task card list. Younger students can match characters to the books in which they appear. An index of books and characters to use for creating your own task cards can be found at www.primate.wisc.edu/people/hamel/seuss.html

Rhyme time

Your study of Dr. Seuss can go on throughout April, which is National Poetry Month. What better way to introduce poems and rhyme than with the nonsensical rhymes of Dr. Seuss? Put Dr. Seuss titles into your Reading Corner and send your students on a nonsense word hunt to find new words. Post them on a bulletin board with their meanings and reinforce synonyms by finding real words that might have the same meaning. You can incorporate technology with PowerPoint, a database program or a word processing program to create a nonsense dictionary with words, definitions and illustrations. Students can add their own words to the dictionary.

Going places

After that, don't put Dr. Seuss away yet! Try some activities for Oh, the Places You'll Go! to help students make choices for the end of the school year. It's a great way to set goals for summer and look ahead to their promotion to a new grade. This book is also a great way to get students involved in geography and mapping. Start with places they've been. Younger students can find them on a map; older students can calculate the miles they've traveled. For a bonus, see how many real-life places students can find to fit settings for Dr. Seuss books. Whether you have kindergartners or middle schoolers, there's something to tickle the fancy of students of any age when they read Dr. Seuss.

Online Seuss resources

* Dr. Seuss Teacher Resource File http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/seuss.htm

* Read Across America www.nea.org/readacross/

* Seussville University (from Random House) www.seussville.com/university