Would you, could you, on a boat? by Karissa

Each year, in honor of Dr. Suess’ birthday, we spend time reading, listening and interacting with many of his books. Just this past week, we listened to “Green Eggs and Ham” on a recording that has a catchy beat and fun voices as a part of the narration. It is so fun to watch my group of students as they giggle and tap their toes while I flip the pages. It is amazing how one story can provide so many opportunities for learning! As the teacher you are able to use great literature as a springboard for learning.

After reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” we made predictions. Twelve out of seventeen students said they would not like green eggs and ham. One day in class we made green eggs for a snack. We had to use teamwork, healthy living skills (washing hands, keeping hands out of mouth and nose, coughing into sleeve), measuring skills, communication skills and a lot of patience! When our snack was ready, we encouraged each other to try at least one bite to see if our predictions were right..  The result was almost the opposite! Eleven out of seventeen did like green eggs!

Dr. Seuss helped us talk about directional words. This past week we worked on putting green eggs on the boat, in the house, on the train, etc. We even added some of our own! Would you like them under a log? Would you like them with a hog? Would you like them next to a pool? Would you like them outside a pool?

Dr. Seuss’ books have great rhymes! Rhyming is a harder concept for my students. It is not that they can’t recite a poem or song that contains rhymes. Rather, given a word, they are not able to consistently come up with a word that rhymes. Part of this is developmental, but another huge piece is language-based. Some of my students do not have the English vocabulary to formulate words that sound alike. “Green Eggs and Ham,” “Hop on Pop,” “The Cat and the Hat,” and many others help us hear rhymes and remind us it is fun to make up new words too!

Although he may be over 100 years old, Dr. Seuss is still bringing smiles and a great deal of learning to people of all ages!