Literacy Activities to Celebrate Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss’ birthday is celebrated as Read Across America Day (or week) in early March. It’s a great time to have fun with rhymes and Seuss-style silliness. Here are some great literacy activities inspired by Dr. Seuss.

If your little ones are working on letter recognition, grab this Cat in the Hat inspired alphabet game printable from Tot Schooling. It includes both upper and lower case letter options, with printable cards you can mix up so kids can match and cover up the letters with counters, pompoms or whatever you have on hand.

Or try a red fish, blue fish alphabet matching game like this one from Growing Book by Book. This one is DIY because it’s not a printable, but it’s still pretty fast to pull together, especially if you don’t do all the letters.

Learn more about word families with these printable word family hats from This Reading Mama. Of course there’s a -at one, but there’s also an -an and -ap list. When all the words that have those letters are laid out, it makes a red and white striped hat.

For older kids, Minds in Bloom has a fun set of Seuss-inspired writing prompts. These touch on lots of different books, so you can focus on a book that you’ve read together or pick a prompt at random. Or do this writing prompt and art project in one inspired by Oh the Places You’ll Go from Schooltime Snippets.

Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? is a book full of fun sounds. You can learn more about and play with onomatopoeia with this fun printable pack based on that book from Rock Your Homeschool (signing up for emails is required). You can use them to review words, match the thing with its sound, or to help make up stories.

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Celebrate Reading with Read Across America Day

The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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