Dr. Seuss Storytime free at all Target Stores!

Dr. Seuss Storytime free at all Target Stores!  This February 25th, 9am to 11am, bring your kids to the closest Target store, where you'll find a free celebration of all things Dr. Seuss! There will be goody bag giveaways, fun activities and and storytime! Good times, and totally free!   March 2nd is Dr. Seuss's Birthday.  Celebrate all month long with Seusstastic reading tools and interactive games.  The film The Lorax opens nationwide also on this day.  To watch the trailer and free downloads click on the website below: http://www.theloraxmovie.com/index.php#/truffula

 

 

Read for the Trees and NEA's Read Across America

The theme is green for a very special 2012 Read Across America celebration. NEA's Read Across America campaign will showcase the Lorax book as well as NBC/Universal's The Lorax. For a sneak peek, here's the latest trailer. The film opens nationwide March 2, 2012 and Universal, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and Random House have joined NEA's Read Across America, creating new posters and classroom guides for the campaign. Read Across America will also develop new event ideas and materials to help you make this a Seussational celebration.

 DON'T FORGET TO PLEDGE

Whether it's planting a Truffala tree forest, reading garden, or having the Lorax lead your reading parade, don't forget to share your plans for celebrating NEA's Read Across America on the Read Across America pledge site. You'll find pledges from around the country and even around the world, linked to a special Google map. Plus, we'll soon be uploading news from the Lorax, our partners, and even guest bloggers.

Lorax resources ready for your classroom

If you're reading The Lorax for Read Across America Day and looking for lesson plans and materials, there are plenty of resources available, including The Lorax Project from Dr. Seuss,  Lorax familiy literacy bags from Reading Rockets, and ReadWriteThink.org. If you have a lesson plan or resource you'd like to share, emailreadacross@nea.org with your link.  

Looking for Books?

If you serve a high needs student population and are in need of books for your reading event, check out the First Book Marketplace, run by Read Across America partner First Book. They have books by Dr. Seuss and many of your favorite authors at significant discounts. And if you qualify, sign up to become a First Book recipient of free books. 

Join the Read Across America Fan and Cause pages on Facebook

Help us spread the word and build a nation of readers! Through the Read Across America Facebook fan page and cause page you'll be able to share photos, videos, and ideas, plus hear the latest news from NEA's Read Across America and its partners.

Ready for your 15 minutes of Fame?

How about sending your latest video to SchoolTube?  It can be your own music reading video, book trailer, or coverage of a recent event. SchoolTube has created a Read Across America channel just for you. To sign up and share your videos, go to SchoolTube.  

About NEA’s Read Across America

The National Education Association is building a nation of readers through its signature program, NEA’s Read Across America. Now in its thirteenth year, this year-round program focuses on motivating children and teens to read through events, partnerships, and reading resources.

NEA’s Read Across America Day, NEA’s national reading celebration takes place each year on or near March 2, the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books, and you can too!

"You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child."

Check out our Dr. Seuss Birthday / Read Across America Day Party HERE 

• The LORAX Reader's Guide

  What would you do with the last truffula seed? What happens next?
  PDF 459KB

• Which Dr. Seuss Character Are You?

  • Take our quiz and find out

• More Seuss Fun

  Get inspired with these free
  Dr. Seuss activities.
  PDF 1.02MB

Tell a Story Day with kids!

Who, what, when, where and why should we tell stories? Storytelling is one of our oldest art forms and is an incredible way to help children and adults gain an appreciation for words. We believe that reading, writing, listening to and telling stories are all important aspects of any person’s education. Anyone of any age can tell a story.

Stories are used today for all sorts of things. Babysitters and nannies can tell stories to keep kids entertained, family gatherings, summer camping, picnics, and slumber parties are just some of the times where storytelling is popular today. We believe that you can take any part of you day and turn it into a story. If you are in your backyard and you and your children see a spider and watch where it goes and what it does you can (with your children) create a story about the spider. You can get the kids to decide on a lesson the spider will learn or just a story on what he is doing. You can create a story using only pictures or actually writing it down. if the children are young you can have them tell you the story and you can write it down putting each sentence or complete thought on the top of a piece of paper and have the children illustrate the story. We actually have many stories in our house done this way from when the children were younger. We find ourselves, from time to time, reading older stories the kids wrote over the years. The kids particularly, enjoy their own stories and illustrations and usually end up laughing hysterically at their own work.

Today with the kids we will focus on Folk Tales and Folk Storytellers. How stories have passed down from generation to generation even without books and conveniences we use today. How stories have withstood the tests of time and influence cultures. We will focus on how storytellers use body language and voice pitching to create the mood of the story being told and how these affect the persons listening and watching the storyteller. The 3 folk tales we think are fun for today are:

Black Snake and the Eggs

Click HERE for Tale              

Click HERE for Power Play (children can act the story out)

The Chief  Who Was No Fool

Click HERE for Tale            

Click HERE for Power Play (children can act the story out)

Spider and the Honey Tree

Click HERE for Tale             

Click HERE for Power Play (children can act the story out)

 

We will each choose one of the stories and decide how we want to present the story.  Whether we want to just read the story from the pages or whether we want to create props and tell the story in our own words to the listeners.

This will be fun family evening as the kids present the stories to each other after dinner

Remember to ask your children "WHAT stories can you tell?" today and have fun with it!

Telling Stories:

	Encourages the development of a better understanding of self, others, and people of the world
	Internalizes the sense of story form
	Improves comprehension
	Improves self-esteem, builds confidence and poise
	Improves expressive language skills and stimulates inventive thinking

Visit this site HERE for some inspiration on Story Telling.

Read Across America Day with kids!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!! What a great day to choose to promote “Read Across America”.  Reading is such an essential part of any education and life that I think it is wonderful to celebrate it.  We love to celebrate Read Across America Day and have so much fun coming up with unique ways to make it fun every year!

Lauren is a huge Dr. Seuss fan and in fact has read the books we have so often that she knows them by memory now.  One of the books that Matthew loved to read to Lauren was “The Lorax”.  This year Matthew decided he wanted to create Truffula Trees for our decoration in our Craft Day.  His thought was to paint some bamboo sticks black and yellow for the trunks.  Wendy created the tissue paper flowers for the tops of the tree.  These were really cute and added such great ambiance to our celebration. 

We made our own Dr. Seuss hats this year.  We bought Red and White Felt and sewed them together so it looked exactly like the real Cat in the Hat! 

We served Green Eggs and Ham for lunch – lol, we actually made sandwiches and ate green colored deviled eggs. 

We bought a box of Tri-Colored Gold Fish snacks and had Matthew separate them by color, he loved it!  We then placed each color in individual mini fish bowls for our “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish”.  Lauren made Salt Dough and by using a fish cookie cutter she cut out a few fish and then stuck a popsicle stick through them, allowed them to dry and then painted them.  The adults helped her paint with puffy paint the wording on them.  They turned out so cute and went great with our centerpiece!

We served Blue Punch and Thing 1 & Thing 2 cupcakes as well.  The cupcakes were made using red colored cupcakes in Red cupcake sleeves, white icing on them and then Blue Cotton Candy, we punched out 1 ¼ white circles and using a black Sharpe painted the rim of them and then wrote Thing 1 and Thing 2 and taped to the cupcake sleeve ….very simple to make!

Along with our DIY Hats we also dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2.  We just so happened to find these fuzzy blue hats at our local Dollar Tree store!  So because we had white felt circles left over from our DIY Hats we wrote “Thing 1” on one and “Thing 2” on the other…..too easy, lol!

When all said and done….Lauren had a fabulous time and loved being Thing 1 for the afternoon.  Matthew loved to eat all the yummy food and creating the fun atmosphere for the party.

Below we wanted to share the Read Across America information that is found at NEA National Education Association - http://www.nea.org

Our friends at Random House have put together a terrific Read Across America resources page featuring a teacher's guide, activities, games and so much more. Head to Seussville for a Seussational reading adventure.  

Read Across America Poem

You're never too old, too wacky, too wild,
To pick up a book and read with a child.
You're never too busy, too cool, or too hot,
To pick up a book and share what you've got. 

In schools and communities,
Let's gather around,
Let's pick up a book,
Let's pass it around.

There are kids all around you,
Kids who will need
Someone to hug,
Someone to read.

Come join us March 2nd
Your own special way
And make this America's
Read to Kids Day.

Reader’s Oath

Words by Debra Angstead

Missouri-National Education Association

I promise to read

Each day and each night.

I know it’s the key

To growing up right.

I’ll read to myself,

I’ll read to a crowd.

It makes no difference

If silent or loud.

I’ll read at my desk,

At home and at school,

On my bean bag or bed,

By the fire or pool.

Each book that I read

Puts smarts in my head,

‘Cause brains grow more thoughts

The more they are fed.

So I take this oath

To make reading my way

Of feeding my brain

What it needs every day.

Downloads:

RAA Achievement Certificate - Click HERE to print out

RAA Appreciation Certificate - Click HERE to print out

Read Across America Song

The following song was written and donated to NEA by Glenn Weiss. Sheet music (PDF 1p, 68 KB) is available. Please feel free to use it in your Read Across America events. Enjoy!

Read Across America

©2003 Glenn Weiss

 

Read across America
We're so proud of our whole school
We're reading books across America
You know reading's really cool.
Every book unfolds a world
That'll take you far away.
Come join us young and old,
 

Boys and girls exercise your mind today.

Your imagination is something you should feed.
 

For growing inspiration let reading be your seed.

Read across America,
From sea to shining sea
Read across America
Will build a better you and me.

Read across America,
From sea to shining sea
Read across America
Will build a better you and me.
Will build a better you and me.

We had such a fantastic celebration to promote reading and just had fun celebrating the birthday of Dr. Seuss!

   

 

Read for the Record!

Help Share 100,000 Books
With Pre-schoolers On October 7

When you read The Snowy Day at We Give Books before October 7, we’ll share another print copy of this classic story with a child so that he or she can take part in a local Read for the Record celebration on October 7. 

 http://www.wegivebooks.org/pf/rftr/index.html

 

Get Ready to Set a Record
This Thursday!

Last year, more than 2.1 million people took part in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign.
Please join us later this week—Thursday, October 7—as we try to create a new World Record for the most people reading the same book on the same day.
In the process, we aim to raise awareness about the important role that reading has in shaping a child’s life. We also want to showcase Jumpstart’s efforts to make sure every child has a chance to succeed in classrooms every day.

Here’s what you can do today to get ready for this big day:

Read right now: Read the official book of Jumpstart’s 2010 Read for the Record Campaign—Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day—right now, online for free.
Each time you read The Snowy Day at We Give Books prior to October 7, we’ll share another print copy of this classic story with a child so that he or she can take part in a local Read for the Record celebration.
Read today and you’ll be automatically registered as a new member of We Give Books. You’ll be all set to help break the record by reading again on October 7, and you’ll get immediate access to our growing digital library of new and classic children’s books, always available—anytime, anywhere—for free.
Spread the word: Take a moment to share the Read for the Record campaign with people you know—email them a link to this page. You can also spread the word via Facebook and Twitter.

Johnny Appleseed Day with kids!

Johnny Appleseed Day honors one of America's great legends. Johnny Appleseed was a real person. John Chapman was among the American settlers who were captivated by the movement west across the continent. As Johnny Appleseed travelled west, he planted apple trees along the way, and sold trees to settlers. With every apple tree that was planted, the legend grew.

A Little About the Legend: