Dr. Seuss’ Birthday is right around the corner and in this house we LOVE our Dr. Seuss books. We have been needing to work on our math skills lately and this Dr. Seuss math activity is a perfect way to work on our math while celebrating! However…you can imagine my surprise when I went to our book shelf and did not find a single Dr. Seuss book!
Every month we pack up our books and take them to the local Women’s and Children shelter drop box and go buy a new box of books from Half Price Books. We love doing this because a book box at half price books is extremely affordable ($20-30 for at least 75 books), it changes up what we are reading since both my kids are huge book lovers, and it gives us the chance to share our love of books with other kids who are in tough situations.
However, not having a single Dr. Seuss book on our shelves simply is not acceptable! So, I went browsing for deals since our Half Price Book boxes are hit and miss (you cannot pick out which books you get). Right now you can get five Dr. Seuss books for $5.95 through Early Moments which if you ask me is a pretty good deal! I know we will definitely be doing this to solve our lack of Seuss problem!
Dr. Seuss Math Activity!
Since we did not have the books at home I turned to YouTube to help us. We originally started off with Horton Hears a Who
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I absolutely love this book and how well it resonates with little kids…because after all” A persons a person no matter how small!” This story incorporates some great language components such as new vocabulary and phonological awareness (which all Dr. Seuss books are great for)! It also presents a great opportunity to work on social skills and can tie into a variety of thematic units.
To do this activity all you will need is the Horton Hears a Who book (or video of e-book) and an array of PomPoms aka clovers. The pack of PomPoms that I used was provided to me by Oriental Trading. The reason these were great for this activity is that there are an array of colors and at least six sizes provided within the bag. PomPoms can be a great and affordable math manipulative, plus they are a lot of fun to squeeze and play with!
How to Use PomPoms as Math Manipulatives:
Count: How many clovers do you have? This is the simplest example, but it really can evolve into so much more. When you do this make sure you are giving your child an amount within their range. While you do want to challenge them, you do not want to overwhelm them.
Sort and Count: Sort by colors and count the groups. This will also give you the chance to ask and encourage math vocabulary such as more than, less than, equal, most, least, etc.
Sort by Size: Sort all the PomPoms by their size and discuss which group of PomPoms bigger, smaller, etc. You could even count the amount in each group
Make Patterns: Use the different colors to make a pattern. For younger kids start with a basic ABA or ABC pattern before proceeding to more complicated patterns. You can even do this by letting your child create their own pattern and play a game of copy patterns where you recreate their pattern and then make a pattern for them to recreate.
Build a Graph: Let kids line up PomPoms based on size or color. Once they have created their graph open discussions about how to build graphs from smallest to largest, or least to most.
The Options are Endless! You can use PomPoms to match just about any level of math your child is at. Are they working on addition or subtraction? What about counting by 2,5, or 10’s? You could even practice recreating the number shapes!
By the time we got to the end of this activity Livia decided it was time to start over. What started as a clover ended as Truffula Tree and we found ourselves listening to The Lorax while delving back into our math manipulatives.
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