Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! Let's Celebrate With Cantata Learning In So Many Fun Ways!

What an exciting day it has been as we celebrate the 112th birthday of one of our favorite authors, Dr. Seuss! 

Everywhere I look there are school libraries, schools, communities, teachers librarians, educators, parents, and children all around the country celebrating through all kinds of activities and events.  

I wrote a post last month which included lots of Dr. Seuss resources and ideas for Read Across America Day.  You can read it here... Check Out The Dr. Seuss Resources, Activities and FUN For Read Across America Day On March 2 & All Throughout The Year!

And it is the PERFECT way to tie in more of our favorite books, authors, illustrators, and publishers. 

When I was working on a project with my 2nd grade friends and the Cantata Learning books, I thought about these connections and how fun it would be to tie in their books to Dr. Seuss and Read Across America too!  

With this project, we are using Cantata Learning's newly published Happy Birthday....Feliz Cumpleanos to create a celebration song for their new library at Van Meter School and as part of the Celebrations Around the World Harmony Project.  

Wouldn't it be fun to use Happy Birthday...Feliz Cumpleanos today as we celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday too.  You can get this one at mycapstonelibrary.com (username: happy /  password: library) right now as part of the Harmony Project. 

Once the library song is complete, we will share it in the global Celebrations Around the World project we are creating with students, teacher librarians, school communities, and others.  

It is going to be so much fun to see what kind of celebration songs, stories, poems, and art that will be shared to include in the global story.  In fact, we have already seen a few projects and ideas.....I can't wait to share more in the weeks to come!  

Please visit the Celebrations Around the World Project here and sign up to join us in this awesome global celebration!   And see all of the Harmony Projects here.  

Then I looked around at all of the Cantata Learning books that feature animals and thought of another connection.

On Monday, my son Hagan wore his pajamas and brought his favorite stuffed animal.  They celebrated and kicked off Read Across America by reading Which Pet Should I Get? by Dr. Seuss.

It would be exciting to tie in all of the books including animals from Cantata like....

Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends 

(which you could also tie in The Lorax to this one as you talk about the environment)

Three Little Kittens, Five Little Ducks, Three Blind Mice, Two Elephants, 

Five Speckled Frogs, and 

Ten Pigs in Bed, which also goes along nicely with National Pig Day that is also celebrated today.

All of these books and even more from Cantata Learning that feature animals would be the perfect connection with the fun stories and songs that go along with each one.

We find these things in Cantata Learning's books too!

One of the best things about Dr. Seuss is the way he played with words throughout his books.  There were rhymes, patterns, poems, stories and lots of fun included in each one.

The Spring 2016 books recently hit the shelves and there are lots of classic nursery rhymes that children love like The Muffin Man. 

This would tie in great with books like Green Eggs and Ham as we find creative ways to prepare snacks for this special week.

You can find all of the Nursery Rhymes and Folklore from Cantata here.

One of my favorite new ones is Miss Mary Mack.  How fun would it be to celebrate rhyming and this classic song as we celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss!  I know he would have thought so too!

And we can even do the hand claps as we sing as they are doing on the front cover.  Dr. Seuss books are great for dancing and hand moments just like this like.

We all love the way he played with the illustrations through his amazing art work in each book.

You can discover even more on The Art of Dr. Seuss website.

There are all kinds of beautiful projects that we can do to celebrate Dr. Seuss and Read Across America....I love how they tie in his art work too.

You can find lots of ideas on the Cantata Learning Read Across America Pinterest wall here.

I have seen so many cute ideas on Facebook this week too...I love this one from my friend Kristy Skoglund that she shared yesterday.

One more thing I wanted to mention. It sure isn't rare to see people dressed up like Cat in the Hat, Lorax, and other Dr. Seuss characters this week.

My friend Cynthia Stogdill posted this today on Instagram and wondered how many other teacher librarians were dressed up to celebrate.

If you want to dress up and do something fun, don't worry if you don't have a hat like Cynthia's or other costumes.

You can use the Dr. Seuss Camera...The Cat in the Hat Edition app to make anyone into the Cat in the Hat including....

Eric, as we had a little fun celebrating at home today.

Wouldn't it be fun to tie in Cantata Learning's Three Little Kittens with this app and other books.....Just think of the rhyming stories, songs, and poems your students could come up with on their own!  

They would love writing a version of Three Little Kitten to sing and illustrate themselves. This app and these project ideas would be the perfect inspiration. 

You can find even more ideas on tying Cantata Learning to Read Across America and Dr. Seuss in this Google Document that we started this week.  

I hope everyone has a terrific time celebrating Read Across America this week.  I can't wait to see what is shared and all of the wonderful connections and creations being made.  

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss....and for everything you continue to bring us.