March 2 is one of my favorite days of the year. In 1904, one of the world's greatest children's authors was born - Dr. Seuss. As the children oohed and ahhed over Xan's Transformer, I snuck into my closet and donned my big red bowtie and a "Cat in the Hat" hat. The children recognized my character instantly and we sang "Happy Birthday" to Dr. Seuss (and Brian Counihan). Nora brought her copy of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" which I read to the class while they ate their fruit break.
To celebrate the day, the children sat down at the tables to make hats of their own. I had pre-cut hat shapes and they added stripes to make the now familiar patterned hats. The strips were quite long to accommodate any part of the hat. I showed them the secret way to trim and make it look as though they tailored their strips to fit the hats. They used varied colors and were so proud of their work we naturally had to take pictures later in the day.
They had their Enrichment classes today but Julie dropped by early to share an opportunity for parents next week. She has been working on Fairy Tales with the Early Learners and next week they will present them in play form. Parents are invited at their child's usual Drama time when all 3 classes will each present a Fairy Tale. Our time is 10:45. The children will perform their fairy tale 3 times so the parents of each class can see them. This isn't a lot of notice and I know many of you won't be able to come so I will try to borrow a camcorder to record the plays and then make DVDs for each of our families.
Tonight you have homework which your child has brought home in their folder. I need you to fill out the short survey about Dr. Seuss stories. Below are some Dr. Seuss facts to impress your family and friends.
1. While attending Dartmouth, Ted Geisel was the editor of the college newspaper. He
was removed from that position for throwing an "unapproved" party and began
writing articles for the paper using his middle name, Seuss.
2. During WWII he wrote training cartoons for the Army featuring the character
Private Snafu.
3. His first book "And to Think I It on Mulberry Street" was inspired by the rhythm
of the engines of the ocean liner he was traveling on.
4. He submitted this book to 27 publishing houses and was rejected 27 times. An old
college friend convinced Vanguard Press to print it.
5. His second book, "The Cat in the Hat", was written after Rudolph Flesch wrote "Why
Johnny Can't Read" and John Hersey wrote an article that children's books were
boring an needed illustrators like Ted Geisel and Walt Disney. He used the 220
new-reader word list to write it.
6. "Green Eggs and Ham" was written when his old friend Bennet Carf bet he couldn't
write a book using only 50 words or less.
7. The few books he did not illustrate himself he used the name Theo. LeSieg which is
Geisel spelled backwards.
Please watch the television in the morning in case we have a late arrival time. Mother Nature has again started snowing earlier than predicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment