Word Ladders, Spelling, and Writing Your Name -Cat in the Hat Style

D r Seuss Word Family Hat Craft

Today the children and I worked on a craft to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday.  Along with the craft came some learning too!  We made hats that look like the hat from The Cat in the Hat!  Afterwards, we wrote words on the hats – I modified the work depending on the age and skill level of the children.  There are so many different ways you can modify this craft in order to accommodate different levels of children’s abilities.  Here is how we made our hats…

1)  We started with a large/long piece of white construction paper.  I also had a smaller size piece of red construction paper.  I folded the red construction paper into a ‘fan’ – with the folds about the size of my thumb.  I then asked the children to cut along the folded lines of the paper.

2)  Next, we glued down the red pieces onto the white construction paper -making red and white stripes.

3)  The next thing I did was a cut a slit about one inch from the bottom of the hat on each side of the paper.  I cut a slit about one inch long.  I next folded the sides of the top hat to create an easy line on which the children could cut.

4)  My hat was finished!  I then wrote a word ladder on the hat to help my beginning reader practice her phonics for the day.

Here are some pictures of the children making their hats.  My girls decided to make a rainbow hat.  My second grader decided she wanted to make a very tall top hat  – so, she added extra colors to the top of hers.  I helped my preschooler make the hat.  He cut out green strips of paper for me, and then glued them onto the back of my red hat I had created.  After we had made all our hats, each of the children had different skills they were needing to practice.  For my Kindergartner – she is on Day 70 of the Sight and Sound Reading Program.  I chose a few sight words from around Day 70 to help her practice reading those words.  For my second grader, I dictated spelling words to her and she wrote them on her hat.  For my preschooler, I wrote his name at the bottom of the hat and he practiced writing his name all the way up the hat.  He had to pay special attention that he started his name with a capital letter and wrote the rest of it in lower case letters!  Another way in which you could modify this activity is to write  just letters on the hat and practice the sounds of the letters.  You can also write word families/word ladders on your hats!  Anyway – here are some pictures of my children making their hats!  They turned out great, we had a great time…  and, we all learned a few things along the way.

Cutting the strips of paper.

Gluing the strips of paper onto the white paper.

Writing their spelling words, or writing their name.

Ta-da!  Our completed Cat in the Hat learning hats!

 

Do you have any suggestions to modify this activity for other levels and abilities.

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