Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Can you see the orange bow in Samantha's hair?

 
Friday was Dr. Seuss's birthday, and Ashaway School celebrated in style!  For starters, everyone was encouraged to wear orange in honor of the Lorax, one of our favorite characters from his books.  As you probably know, the new movie was just released and the tagline is Orange is the New Green!

Surprise!

Every class had a discussion about ways we can help our environment, and every room received a surprise visit by Mr. Morrone...on a bicycle!  He reminded the students that riding your bike to a nearby destination can help cut down on pollution, and he gave every student a packet of seeds (courtesy of URI who provided a variety free of charge).  I would love for folks to send in pictures of what they grow!

In the library, every student also got to select a bookmark cut from an old book catalog.  That might not sound very exciting, but the students were thrilled with all the different colors and designs there were to choose from!  We talked about ways that we can Reuse, Reduce and Recycle every day both at school and at home.

My first graders enjoyed an activity on the SmartBoard called "Break the Lorax Code".  I found it at www.seussville.com, which is a wonderful website chock-full of great stuff!  The children are learning about vowels in their classrooms, so I asked them what the three missing letters (at the bottom of the board) have in common.  After answering that question, I challenged them to identify the other two vowels and to find them in the message on the board.  Then each student had the opportunity to come up to the board and fill in one of the blanks.

A student leads the class in reading the Lorax's message out loud.

Our celebration came to a lovely close with 20 minutes of D.E.A.R. Time (Drop Everything And Read) at the end of the day.  What better way to honor Dr. Seuss than encouraging students to take some time to enjoy a good book?

Mrs. Lee's class was in the library during Friday's D.E.A.R. Time