Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Oh the places you'll go


We celebrated the great rhyming man today yesterday in great style.  About a week ago I talked my sweet husband into performing his  skit,  "The Sneetches" with three high school students and 12 fifth grade students at my school.  He, reluctantly (only because he has much that he juggles at his own job), agreed to take it on.  Monday night I brought him home a dryer box and he cut it and painted it to make the "wondrous contraption" for adding and removing stars.  If I haven't mentioned it before I love having a dramatic husband, who can act, direct and make his own scenery.  I bought 12 yellow t-shirts from a near by big box craft store-hey, they were 1/2 price-and we were in the skit-making business!  They performed the skit four times and my husband did a dramatic reading of Yertle  the Turtle, which is his all-time favorite because it is about government crushing the little guy.  Students talked about the skit all the rest of the day so I guess it was a hit.  I've already mentioned to my husband he might want to pencil us in for next year and tonight at dinner I hinted he might want to add to his Seuss repertoire!! 

Dr. Seuss has been a favorite of mine for years.  I have lovely memories of reading early readers such as One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to my two little brothers.  My son (the 14 yo) always wanted to read Seuss during that first grade period when we expected him to read to us...little did we know at the time he picked Seuss because he had them memorized!!  He's still talented like that because today he was one of the teenagers working with the younger ones.  He played Sylvestre McMonkey McBean, the huckster. 

I'm so glad, glad, glad for 1. having a family I can count on, 2. crossing this celebration off my list for the week, 3. and because it went really well for all involved! 

Now I can move on to planning my next major school event-The Yoga Project!!  Next week a certified yoga teacher will come to our school and work with 12 students to make a yoga DVD for classroom use.  I have been working on this project for what seems like months (and its not exactly something you can throw together in a week-see top paragraph).  I have a little anxiety-hopefully it will go well!!

I miss Dr. Seuss-not that I ever met him-but I would love to see what he would be producing today.  Perhaps a look at pollution (did that -McGilligott's Pool), environment (hhmmm, did that, The Lorax), war (did that too-The Butter Battle Book),diversity (oh, did that too, Horton Hears a Who)-Wow, okay still I'm sure he would find new ways to entertain, persuade and inform! 

I hope you had a wonderful day celebrating in your own way and if you are new to Dr. Seuss I recommend almost all-there's a wocket in my pocket-we don't know what went wrong there-way too wonky for us!!
Click here and here for two great Seuss sites-I am now an expert at getting the gifts into the chimneys and the second site I used with 4th and 5th grade students-they had to read the whole article about Dr. Seuss and answer questions-it was good, fun and best of all, really made them think and process information!  Some of them garrrrrumfed about it but they got it done (it was only 4 questions-jeez!)
Leave a comment and let me know what you did for Dr. Seuss' birthday or what your favorite Seuss book/character is.

Happy Reading-

2 comments:

Jenners said...

I would love to see that skit! We love the Sneetches story ... and I could totally see that working as a wonderful skit!

My son is obsessed with the pants with nobody inside them.

His school is celebrating Dr. Suess all this week. They ate green eggs and ham yesterday, today was "Wacky Wednesday" and they wore their clothes backwards. It is wonderful.

I always like Dr. Suess when I was a child but I didn't fully realize his genius until I became a parent!!!

Elaine said...

My kids loved the Sneetches skit and the cookies the lovely McKinstry family made! They have also enjoyed having a 3rd grader from Mrs. Taylor's class come each day after lunch for the last three days to read a Dr. Seuss book to us. My favorite Dr. Seuss book is Green Eggs and Ham because every year in Feb. or March kids realize they can read that really long book all by themselves. I have six copies of it and it becomes very popular. It is happening now in my room right on schedule.