"Green Eggs and Ham" Activities for Multiple Intelligences

Dr. Seuss’s birthday is coming up next week.  To honor his birthday (and to celebrate “Read Across America Day” on March 1), I decided to put together a series of activities based on his classic “Green Eggs and Ham”.  The activities are designed for multiple intelligences to provide something that will, hopefully, appeal to any student.  

So, back to “Green Eggs and Ham”.  It’s such a great book.  It appeals to everyone from pre-readers to young readers and even old folks like me.  It is written with only 50 different words (so that Dr. Seuss could win a bet with his publisher).  The language is simple and its rhyming, repetitive format makes it very predictable.  

While I have long extolled the virtues of this book, I forgot about the most important aspect of it.  It’s just a blast to read out loud.  Last week, I sat down and read the book with a student.  The rhyme, the rhythm, the repetition; it just flows.  We read back and forth, me reading most of it and my student providing the logical rhyming words.  It was quite simply, a thoroughly enjoyable experience for both of us.  

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss and, thank you.

Misty

Get the "Green Eggs and Ham" activities free by clicking for the Preschool version 

or the School-Age version

“Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.” ― Dr. Seuss

Phonemic Awareness Activities (Early Reading Skills)

Research has shown that a child's phonemic awareness (ability to hear and manipulate sounds within a word) is a very good indicator of that child's future reading success or struggle.  So, how do we build phonemic awareness in children, including very young children?

• Rhyming--read rhyming poems and stories, emphasizing the rhyming words.  Leave a rhyming word out and have the child fill in a word that works.    
• Blending--putting individual sounds together to make words.  For example, "/b/, /a/, /t/ says what?"  Then change it, "what if we use a /c/ instead of /b/?"  In addition to individual sounds, you can also blend and change groups of sounds; "/h/, /op/ says what? What if you change /op/ to /at/?"
• Segmenting--segmenting is the opposite of blending; the child tells you all of the sounds they hear in a word.  "What sounds do you hear in 'stop'?"
• Isolating sounds--matching words with the same beginning, middle or ending sounds.  Sort pictures; play "Beginning Sound Concentration"--find pictures with matching sounds; play "I Spy"--"I spy something  that starts with /w/."
• Identifying and sequencing sounds--first, identify sounds in isolation.  This part can be done in the classroom or on a "sound walk".  "What was that sound you just heard?"  (crumpling paper, clapping, sliding a chair, etc.)  Once children learn to identify different sounds pretty well, you can start sequencing the sounds and see if the children can tell you what sound they heard first, next and last.  Or, give them three sounds, then do it again, leaving one sound out.  See if the children can identify which sound was left out.
• Deleting sounds--leaving one sound or part of a word out and seeing what word remains.  "Say the word 'toothbrush'.  Now say 'toothbrush' without saying 'tooth'."  The child should respond "brush".  "Say the word 'train'.  Now say 'train' without saying 't'."  The child should respond "rain".

Anything that we can do to help child develop phonemic awareness will help them in their reading, regardless of whether they are currently learning to read or still a few years away.

Misty

Image courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Don't Forget Dr. Seuss

"Roses are red, violets are blue...."  I'm pretty sure we all know that little poem.  But somewhere along the line, it seems like many of our children have forgotten how to rhyme.

It seems that, more often than not, the students who come to me for extra reading support do not know how to rhyme.  So, why is this important?  Understanding onset (the initial consonant or consonant blend of a word) and rime (the vowel and the consonants that follow it) is a critical skill in developing phonological awareness, one of the foundations of reading.  Children do not learn to read words until they first learn to pull apart the individual sounds in a word.  Pull them apart first to get the concept, then learn how to put them back together.

So, what has happened to rhyming?  I have a theory that is, in no way, research-based; just based upon my own observations.  It seems to me that perhaps we are such a "sophisticated" society these days, that we don't need to worry about things like reading Dr. Seuss to our children.  Hop on Pop is cliche; we've all read it a million times.  But have our children?  Books like that are perfect for early readers...or even pre-readers.  Children love books that are predictable and repetitive.  They can learn to "read" them, or at least parts of the books, by themselves.  In doing so, they begin to understand our alphabetic system.  Even more importantly, they learn to play with words by changing the beginning sounds.  Change the /h/ in "hop" to /p/ and you have "pop".  Thus we have the beginnings of onset and rime.

As the child eagerly fills in the words that you leave out when you are reading and come up with other rhyming words that could fit in that same spot, they learn how much fun they can have with reading.  A love for reading will lead to a desire to read more, which will ultimately lead to fluent reading.  In the words of Dr. Seuss, from I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

Misty