Celebrating Read Across America!
If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ll know that Read Across America Week is kind of a big deal around here. We celebrated last year, the year before, and the year before that. And guys, we go big or we go home.We’ve covered all sorts of treats in red & blue chocolate, made truffula trees, cut out dozens of letters spelling out the word, “Seuss”, and generally have a blast.
The week after Read Across America, I pretty much just want to take a 15-hour nap.
Last year was no different. We celebrated with a few different things: tasty treats, fun crafts, lots of new bulletin boards & hallway decorations, and, of course, guest readers!
Some people completely understand my crazy obsession with doing so many fun things for this week, but others might think I’m a little nuts.
Here’s the real reason: It’s an excuse to have some fun. I want our kids to love school, to love reading, to love books, to love to learn. Any excuse we can find to make a big to-do and share the joy of learning, books, and reading is worth it! We could do this even if there wasn’t a special week for Read Across America, but it’s a great, ready-made reason!
Anybody who knows me knows that any good holiday/celebration/ordinary day starts with a special mug. I saw this cute mug for sale on our last trip to Pheonix, and I had to grab it! It served me well, even if it was a bit smaller than my usual ginormous coffee mug!
So here are the fun things we did last year to make this week special!
Fun wall decor. Last year, I made the big truffula trees and my librarian & I decorated the doorway to the library! You can check out the DIY for the truffula trees here.
An easy way to add a little life and interest to the hallways is with the Seuss character silhouettes. We projected images of the characters onto black butcher paper and I traced them with a white crayon. Then we cut them out and taped them to the wall. We made them all face down towards the hallway to show all the characters heading to read!
These cute Seuss arrow signs were a lot easier to make than I expected! I printed out sheets of color with words typed in “Doctor Soos” font. Then I drew the arrow on top with a permanent marker and laminated & cut the arrows out. I used a hot glue gun to glue the arrows and the Seuss hat to a long pole and used butcher paper and Dollar Store poofs for everything else! (Poofs made by one of my teachers for a baby shower – it’s good to reuse!)
Bulletin Board
For our new bulletin board, we decided to have kids vote on their favorite Seuss book! We chose nine Seuss titles and made a little table for teachers to use to collect the kids’ votes. Then, we used a Seuss hat to represent each vote on our bulletin board! Surprisingly (to me, anyway), Green Eggs & Ham had SO MANY votes, the hats didn’t all fit! Turns out, kids really loved making green eggs & ham in kindergarten, and so that’s their favorite!
My personal vote: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with The Lorax as a close second.
This was the little table we used to gather the votes!
Fun Snacks
Every year, we make fun snacks for the teachers. We leave them in the lounge so they can grab one during lunch! On Monday, our first treat was Barbaloot Snacks.
This comes from The Lorax when Seuss writes about “the brown barbaloots in their barbaloot suits” eating “barbaloot fruits.” So we used chocolate teddy grahams and fruit flavored marshmallows to make little snacks!
We decorate the lounge to add a little Seuss fun for our teachers!
Our Tuesday snack was Lorax cheeseballs. This was an easy one!
On Wednesday was our most complicated snack. We laid out some plates, melted some red and blue chocolate discs and drizzled them over some chocolate donuts. Then we stuck a stick in each one and used our little styrofoam-filled pots to display them! This day’s theme was “Donut you love Dr. Seuss?”
Thursday wasn’t too complicated. We made truffula tree snacks out of celery and carrots. It was a bit of a stretch, I guess, but teachers were ready for a healthy snack 🙂
On Friday, we reverted to 100% sugar. My niece made us these adorable colorful swirl cookies. We thought they looked Seuss-ish!
Mustache Day for the Lorax on Tuesday,
Crazy Sock Day for Fox in Socks on Wednesday,
It’s one of my favorite school events and I love planning it! For more ideas, check out the posts I’ve written about the other fun stuff we’ve done below!
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