Seuss Architecture

Tuesday morning I sat down at the table by myself while the kids were arriving and playing. 

I started to sketch this picture. 

The kids were instantly intrigued and started bombarding me with questions.

What is that place? What are you drawing?

I told them that they would just have to wait and see. I asked them what theories they had about it.

"Is that the Lorax's house?"

"No, but you are on the right track."

At circle time I hung up the picture and asked them what it reminded them of. What do you notice about it? 

This is how we started our conversation about Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr.Seuss. 

I explained how he was an "imagination expert" and that he could use his imagination just the way kids do.

 He was very good at rhyming and writing words, but he also was an amazing artist. 

We started investigating the way Dr.Seuss liked to draw his houses and buildings. The kids noticed right away that he often included stairs. 

"There's a Wocket in My Pocket."

We looked at a couple books to find other things he commonly included. I introduced some vocabulary and so did the kids. I mentioned all the arches and columns. 

One child mentioned that all the windows were semi-ovals. :) 

"The Sleep Book"

 They noticed that he often included chimneys and smoke and of course stripes. 

Many times the features are crooked and curvy.  

"The Lorax"

The kids have been practicing their own drawings to include the same components as Seuss. We talked about how he drew his pictures with black and then added the color after. 

Another activity that we did on Friday was to make a tally chart as we skimmed through books.

We checked which books included the features that we have been practicing. They were really excited to shout out the items as I flipped through the pages. 

"The Sleep Book"