March 2 is Read Across America Day in honor of the great Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Celebrate with your kids all month long with some fun crafts, recipes, and printables.
The Lorax Paper Plate Craft
What You’ll Need:
Paper Plate
Orange Paint
Large Googly Eyes
Orange Pom-Pom
Yellow Construction Paper
Paint Brush
Glue
Scissors
Directions:
1. Paint the paper plate with the orange paint.
2. After the paint dries, glue on the googly eyes and orange pom-pom for the nose.
3. Fold the yellow construction paper in half and trace your child’s hand.
4. Have your child cut the traced hand out of the construction paper. If your child is just learning how to use scissors, he or she may need hand-over-hand help.
5.Unfold the paper and glue the hand onto the paper plate for the mustache.
6. Cut two ovals out of the yellow construction paper.
7. Cut small, thin slits on one end of each oval and bend them up and down.
8. Glue the ovals above the googly eyes for the eye brows.
From RaisingLittleSuperHeroes.com
The Cat’s Hat Kabobs
What You’ll Need:
For cheesy veggie kabobs: grape tomatoes or red bell pepper with mozzarella cheese or Monterey Jack
For fruit kabobs: strawberry or watermelon with banana or apple (peeled)
For desert kabobs: circular red gummy candies or red licorice wheels with marshmallows (regular or mini, depending on the size of your candy)
bamboo or plastic skewers
Directions:
1. Prepare fruits and vegetables by washing, peel apples or bananas, and cut watermelon from rind.
2. To make a tidy topper, you need to cut foods into circles before you stack them on skewers. Try to create circles or slices of similar diameter and thickness. When adding food to skewers, copy the Cat’s hat—always start with white and end with red.
3. For cheesy veggie kabobs, if you don’t have a small round cookie cutter, try improvising one by pressing a clean plastic lid from a milk jug or a slightly smaller lid from another bottle into modest slices of cheese. Simply slice grape tomatoes and alternate with the cheese on the skewer. Or use red pepper circles that you’ve cut from a quartered and seeded pepper.
4. Alternate strawberry and banana slices to make the fruit kabob. Or substitute circular cut watermelon and peeled apple for a crisp and juicy kabob. Brush banana or apple pieces with lemon juice to keep them from turning brown.
5. Desert kabobs are a sweet chewy treat and should be stacked a little shorter. Use your choice of red candy and alternate with marshmallows. You may want to use clean kitchen shears to cut large marshmallows in half or flatten mini marshmallows to achieve diameters and thicknesses similar to your candy.
6. If your Hat Kabobs are party fare, consider covering the sweet skewer of candy on the desert kabob with clear plastic and tie with a red bow for a take home treat!
Click here for some more fun recipes from Seussville.com!
Puppet Party
What you’ll need:
white plastic spoons and forks
scraps of paper, cardboard from the recycling bin
small plastic lids, bottle caps and other small interesting pieces of plastic from the recycling bin
bits of yarn, ribbon, and fabric
colored tapes (optional)
fluffy chenille stems (optional)
permanent markers
scissors, glue and tape
books by Dr. Seuss
Directions:
1. Kids will quickly get the idea of how to create a cast of Dr. Seuss characters from plastic silverware if you show them an example of a finished puppet. Create a quick Thing 1 by drawing a face on the back of a spoon with a permanent marker. Glue some bits of blue yarn around the bowl rim of the spoon and wrap the handle in red tape. Cut a small circle of white paper, write a number “1” on it and tape it to the puppet. Twist a fluffy red chenille stem around the spoon to create arms and give your puppet means to hold small props if you wish.
2. Then, with books by Dr. Seuss open for inspiration, have kids make their own puppets! Have them draw faces on the backs of clean plastic spoons or forks using a permanent marker. Then kids can draw and cut out hats, hair, horns and other accessories from scraps of paper, make bows and clothes from ribbons and fabric, and even add torsos and limbs using additional flatware, pieces of plastic from the recycling bin or chenille stems. Give them plenty of time to assemble and glue their creations.
3. While glue is drying, turn kids’ attention back Dr. Seuss’s books. Read aloud or have them read together so that later they can retell the story with a puppet show!
Click here for some more awesome Dr. Seuss crafts from Seussville.com!
Click here for some cool printables from Seussville.com!
Some quotable quotes by Dr. Seuss:
“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is youer than you!”
“Be who you are and say what you mean. Because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go!”
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
“Maybe Christmas…he thought..doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more!”
“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
“Oh the things you will find if you don’t stay behind!”
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.”
“If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”
