Plan a Dr. Seuss Event for Your School

If you want to have a fun event at your elementary school that incorporates Dr. Seuss, consider having a Dr. Seuss celebration. You can have it fall on Dr. Seuss's actual birthday which is March 2^nd or you can do it anytime of the year. Most kids know who Dr. Seuss is and will enjoy a celebration that involves his famous books.

My school has planned a Dr. Seuss event with a theme in reading and math and it went great. This article will give you a few tips on things you can do for your event.

#1: Community Readers

Community Readers are people from your community that kids would enjoy hearing read a story. Examples of who you can ask are firefighters, doctors, policemen, nurses, news caster, postal worker or anyone who may be famous or well known in your community. Teachers or parents at your school may even know one of these people so ask for readers at your school first before moving on to contacting the facilities of where the people work that you wan to come in to read. You can match a book to their profession or just have them read a Dr. Seuss book.

#2: Make Your Own Decorations

Most schools don't have a large budget to work with so to save costs, make a few of your own Dr. Seuss themed decorations. I am not an artist by any means but I put together my own six foot full length Cat in the Hat that was hung in our cafeteria. I bought and used three sheets of white poster board, printed out a picture of The Cat in the Hat, grabbed a pencil, eraser and some markers and set to work. It took me around 1 - 2 hours. First I drew him I pencil, then traced over it in black marker and lastly, filled all of it in, in color. The end result only cost $1.50 and involved some time to dedicate to making it. I also made the cats hat on one poster board so that we had another large decoration to hang on the wall. There are several other things that you can do as far as making your own decorations go. You only have to put your mind and imagination to it.

#3: Raffles

Raffles (aka Opportunity Drawings at our school) area big draw that can help get people to come to your event. Try to have one really good item to raffle off. That item is usually what brings the crowds in. For our school, I was able to get four park hopper tickets to Disneyland that Disney themselves donated. In addition to that, we had smaller giveaways so that it would be more enticing to guests. To keep in tune with Dr. Seuss, have a Dr. Seuss themed book basket. We also had a book basket for adults with some autographed books that authors sent our school.

#4: Games

Games are a lot of fun for kids. You can have a fishing game where you have a board or box with someone in the middle. Have it tall enough so that you can't see the person inside. Decorate the front so it looks like a water scene and then add pictures of red fish, blue fish and so on to represent the book. Take a pole or a long stick and attach a string onto it with a clothes pin. Kids can win a prize when they go "fishing." The person inside the hooks hooks a prize when the line drops in and then the child pulls it out to reveal their prize.

You can also have a Cat in the Hat game where kids throw a ball or bean bag into a red and white hat. Give out a prize depending on how many times they make it in.

#5: Food

Sell food at your event to make more money for your school/school group. We had pizza's that were donated by a local business which helped us make even more money. We also had drinks and cupcakes. Our cupcakes were made to look like Thing 1 & 2. We used red cupcake liners, printed out white labels that said "Thing 1," "Thing 2" and then used blue cotton candy for the hair. You can also use blue frosting if you'd rather avoid using cotton candy.

#6: Costumes

Buy or rent some Dr. Seuss costumes such as The Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 or Thing 2, the Grinch, etc. A local costume shop loaned us a Cat in the Hat costume free of charge and the kids loved it. It also makes for good photo ops for the parents.

#7: Print out Printables

Seussville.com is a valuable resource for your event. They have items you can print out for kids to do at your Dr. Seuss celebration such as coloring pages, activity sheets, bookmarks and more. They also have several great ideas that you can incorporate into your event.