Celebrating Dr. Seuss Day With Your Teens


Celebrating Dr. Seuss Day With Your Teens

Dr. Seuss has been a favorite at our house since, well, forever! His creative use of the language appealed to my husband, a theatre major in college, who enjoyed amusing our kids as he read to them while they were young.

A quick Google search or a perusal through Pinterest will yield a ton of fun ideas to help you celebrate his birthday (coming up on March 2) with little ones, but you definitely don’t have to give up the party with your middle- or high-school-aged kids, either!

Actually, I’ve found that celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday can also be a great opportunity to draw in a dad who may be a little reserved or withdrawn from the day-to-day functioning of your homeschool. You know, there’s so much more to home education than “the 3 R’s”, and putting together a Dr. Seuss party for family and friends goes light years towards developing the fourth “R” – relationships! So here, for your homeschool and relationship-building pleasure, are…

5 fun ways to Celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday with Your Teens

Teens love to laugh, and though they may seem to scoff at some of these ideas, keep your own sense of humor and they’ll come along!

1. Play Games

How ‘bout some Seuss-inspired fun? See how many Apples Up on Top each one can balance! Or prepare a bean bag toss and have a competition! If you spend a few minutes ahead of time perusing Pinterest, you can find many game ideas that can be tweaked for teens, as well as…

2. Plan Seuss-inspired Snacks

Ya’ gotta have food with teens, right?! When my teens help or even take over in the kitchen, it’s immediate fun. Prepare a brunch together – how ‘bout cooking up some Green Eggs and Ham? Just don’t dye the ham. Trust me: just don’t! Or a bake-your-own Cat-in-the-Hat pizza? Later on, serve up a blue-frosted birthday cake or cupcakes with a candle and sing Happy Birthday together.

3. Have Book Talks

Perhaps start by sharing a bit about Dr. Seuss’ life, and maybe your own Dr. Seuss favorite (mine is a tie between Horton Hears a Who, and I Can Read With My Eyes Shut), and then ask them to share their favorite book in general. You might need to gently prod them, as my experience these days is that many teens don’t even have a favorite book, as tied into the internet as they are… But it’s worth the effort. This could lead into a pretty serious discussion about the value of reading…or who knows what?! (Actually, the important thing here is to get them talking!)

4. Perform Public Readings

Have a few of Dr. Seuss books at hand, and have them take turns doing a public reading. Write a bunch of adjectives out on 3 X 5 cards (one per card), and each one chooses one before you hand them a book. The challenge is to read the book (or a page, or a section – you decide, and it can vary) as the adjective describes. Some ideas are: happy, sad, silly, mad (it already sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, no?!), loud, soft, upside down… You get the picture!

5. Use Tech Creatively

Using Canva or another graphic tool, create a meme using a background and a line or two from a Dr. Seuss selection. Sharing on Instagram or Pinterest or even Facebook will be a fun way to share and boast about their talents, and express a bit of creative, multi-media learning.

As I always tell my kids “Learning is life, and life is learning!” Seeking real world opportunities to learn throughout life is an important quality to model and encourage for your kids – no matter what the age.

Dr. Seuss would be proud – and you can imagine him laughing and learning right there alongside you!

Pat Fenner

About the author

Attempting for many years to nail Jello to the wall, Pat Fenner has been managing to keep up with her brood of 5, celebrate her 20th year of homeschooling, maintain some sort of domestic order, and blog.

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