Dr. Seuss-Inspired Science: More that Just Oobleck!

When you think of science and Dr. Seuss, it wouldn’t surprise me if your first thought went to oobleck, that gooey (in the original, green) goop that’s easy to make and fun to play with.

But there are many, many more ways to tie Dr. Seuss stories to science activities, as shown by this list of 30 Seuss-inspired science activities from Read Science.

Here you’ll find ideas like measuring feet when reading The Foot Book; graphing with Goldfish crackers and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish; going on a sound hunt after reading Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?; stacking turtles and making green eggs and ham, among others.

Do you have any favorite Seuss-inspired activities? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo via Read Science.]

Check out this article on the best STEM gifts for kids.

Check out our Online store for special buys on Educational gifts We find bulk items and end-of-stock supplies to bring you heavily discounted items. (make sure you check our store often so you don’t miss out on new stock). We also have some free printable files, including a Science PDF for learning about Microscopes.

With little kids especially, linking learning to physical activity really does help them learn. Movement can help kids focus, and it just keeps them from sitting still all day, which isn’t good for anyone.

The good news is lots of different learning activities can be adopted to get kids moving while they learn, so let’s look at some math and number activities that use gross motor skills.

Probably the most obvious thing would be hopscotch, which helps kids count while they hop. You can also mix up the numbers, do skip counting with the numbers, give kids a simple math problem and have them hop to the correct answer, and on and on.

This number hop game from Gift of Curiosity is a more chaotic version, with number flash cards on the floor that kids can hop, skip or jump to as you call them out (this one is more for individual number identification than counting). It’s a great indoor option if it’s too hot, cold or rainy out to do traditional hopscotch, too.

This painter’s tape number line idea from Days with Grey doesn’t involve quite as much movement, but kids can move around while they place things on the number line and work on learning about one to one correspondence. In the blog post they use shoes, but you can count anything you’ve got handy. (Be warned when I visited this website had an ad that continually took up the whole page, but you can get the idea pretty quickly.)

One of the important tasks of learning numbers is learning a parent’s phone number just in case it’s ever needed, or how to dial 911 in case on an emergency. Teaching Mama has a great way to practice telephone numbers and get some movement in with a giant telephone keypad made out of paper plates. You can also use this for counting practice, but it’s a great idea for learning phone numbers, too.

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