Last week I shared a little of what Lauren and I did to celebrate Dr. Seuss week and I share our Dr. Seuss birthday celebration from last Friday.  Today I wanted to quickly share a few more details from our week.

We had a lot of fun with The Foot Book. While Lauren was napping I set up a few activities.  To lead Lauren downstairs and to the activities I traced my foot on scrap paper and made a trail of footprints. As soon as she saw them she said, “What’s that?” (her favorite phrase) and ran to them.

She picked them up all along the way to the first activity: foot painting. To prepare, I spread a large canvas drop cloth out on our deck and set up washable paint, paint trays and brushes along with a roll of butcher paper.

Luckily, it was a beautiful afternoon.  When I said, “Paint with your toes” Lauren picked up the paint brush, dipped it in the pink paint and painted on her toes!

So funny! In her defense, we had just days before painted our toe nails, and her polish happened to be almost exactly the same color as her pink washable paint.  (Painting toe nails would also be a fun Foot Book activity.)

Lauren was a little hesitant at first, but after some Mommy modeling toe painting she quickly got the hang of things.

Here’s her finished artwork:

I will admit that I think her favorite part of the whole activity might have been washing her feet in the washtub (to right of photo) before heading in.

Back inside I had another activity all set up: shoe sorting!

Lately, Lauren LOVES putting on our shoes. Slippers, running shoes, Andy’s dress shoes…it doesn’t matter.  I though it might be fun to set serval pairs up for her to try on and play with.  I tried to select a big variety and even dug into our sporting goods closet in the basement to find Andy SCUBA fins.  I also put out some shoe boxes and Lauren enjoyed taking the shoes in and out.  We played shoe store, tired on different shoes, walked in different shoes, matched up pairs of shoes and just had silly foot and shoe fun.

As I’ve mentioned, Lauren’s favorite Seuss character is the Cat in the Hat.  She calls him, “Cat!” I knew I wanted to make a Cat in the Hat craft. Here’s what we ended up making:

It’s a very fun project.  Here’s what you’ll need to make your own:

Paper Plate Cat in the Hat

printable template (click here to download PDF)

paper plate

black paint

paintbrush

red, white, and black construction paper (I used sheets of 12×12 scrapbooking paper because I have tons)

googly eyes (Lauren’s favorite craft supply)

2 chenille stems (aka pipe cleaners), each cut in half-for whiskers

small black pom-pom-for nose

scissors

glue

First, paint the outside rim of the paper plate with black paint.  It’s okay to leave some white showing.  If you look at the Cat himself, you’ll see he really isn’t solid black.  It also just makes the job of painting easier, especially with a toddler.

While paint dries, trace templates onto colored paper and cut out. (My templates are printed on orange paper because that’s what I had in my printer at the time.  Obviously, it makes no different in the final product.)

Once paint has dried, glue face to the center of the plate.  Glue red stripes on hat, and glue (or staple) hat to top of head.  (Staples held the hat on better than glue, and they can be covered up with the ears.) Glue on ears, bow tie, eyes, nose, and whiskers (if you look at the book you’ll see the Cat in the Hat only has 4 whiskers).

Lauren’s really getting the hang of using glue, and she’s amazingly precise about her placement of objects.  I absolutely LOVE how proud she looks after she finishes each step! At the end she held the whole thing up and looked at me with the biggest smile on her face! It really is amazing to watch your child learn, grow, and have fun.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of what Lauren and I did to celebrate Seuss Week! We’ve moving onto our next unit “Green” (can you guess why?).  I hope to share a few things from it too, so please come back soon!