Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! Celebrating Read Across America

Dr. Seuss and I are birthday buddies, I'm March 1st and he's March 2nd! I wanted to share some ways my third graders celebrated last year to hopefully Pinspire you for this year! The first way our school celebrated Read Across America was by having a door decorating contest. My door tied for 1st place and we won an ice cream party. (Woo hoo!) But creating the door wasn't easy! After scouring Pinterest I found various ideas, but I just couldn't make up my mind! Ultimately we voted on two books to feature on our door: There's a Wocket in My Pocket! and I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!
Thinking of a title was hard so I merged the two:

"We Can Read with Our Eyes Shut Even When There's Wockets in Our Pockets!"

This is what our door looked like:

More Close Ups:

For this section of the door I borrowed a ton of Dr. Seuss books from the 1st grade teachers and my students chose their favorite one to pose with. If you look closely, they all have their eyes shut. I loaded all the pictures on my computer then resized them in Microsoft Word. Then I printed them just on a colored printer and laminated. They turned out great and some of my students still have their photos (using them as bookmarks). 

For the bottom half of the door we did a writing activity and made our own wockets. I went to Hobby Lobby and found jean scrapbook paper and cut out pockets. Then I had the students design their own wockets. I modeled a sample wocket with a heart-shaped head to show students how to give the wockets unique characteristics. If you look close you'll find a wocket that was inspired by my sample wocket. (I think it's hilarious when my students copy me hehe.)  After they created their wockets I had them write a descriptive paragraph introducing their wockets on notebook paper cut a tad smaller to go on the pockets. The descriptions were so adorable. I think one student wrote that her wocket likes to read books at Wocket University. 

We had a great time making these and it didn't take long at all! 

I would love to throw a Dr. Seuss Door Linky Party if only I knew how! 

I hope you've been "Pinspired!"

Happy Pinning!