Cat In the Hat Rhyming Hat
Dr. Seuss’ Birthday is coming up on March 2nd. In honor of his birthday and Read Across America day, we did a Cat in the Hat rhyming activity. Rhyming is such an important activity to work on with preschoolers and kindergartners. Some kids get the skill quickly and some need a lot more work with it. We chose to do rhyming with the -at word family because we love the book The Cat in the Hat and -at words are a good family to start with for beginning readers.
To start, we made our own Cat in the Hat. For the cat, we used a paper plate, googly eyes, and black paper for his whiskers, nose, and ears. He also colored black fur around the paper plate. This craft was good practice for using glue.
Then we created his red and white hat. I cut out a large hat out of white construction paper. Then, I cut out red strips and we glued them onto the hat. Next, I wrote -at words onto the red and white stripes.
The next part of the lesson was focused on helping my preschooler learn to read these words. He was already familiar with the -at sound, so we looked at the first letter in each word and sounded it out. He wanted me to draw pictures next to each word. So I tried. And I did a terrible job. I am really a bad artist, so please don’t look too hard 🙂 We then added it to our bulletin board.
Our next rhyming activity was a matching game. I wrote the -at words onto slips of paper (twice for each word). Then we flipped them over and picked two at a time to see if the words matched. This game was another way to practice reading these words.
The next activity we did was a hopping game. I put the -at words on paper plates and also on slips of paper in a hat. Then Troy drew a word from the hat and found the matching paper plate and jumped to it.
All done!
It was a simple game, but effective because it gave him more practice with recognizing and reading the -at family words. Plus it was great for practicing gross motor skills and getting some energy out!
Are you a Dr. Seuss fan? If so, what is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?
Nothing like some Seuss fun to work on rhyming! Pinned this one!
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Great fun! Thanks for sharing Angela. It’s very easy to extend from those activities into reading simple sentences. Troy will already know the sound “a”. You only need to teach the prepositions “in” and “on” to get a range of funny sentences and great drawing prompts. E.g. A cat/rat sat on/in a mat/hat. You can also venture into adjectives with “A fat rat sat on a cat!” With drawings, these make up into a fun reading practice book to share when grandma comes to visit. Maureen
Great ideas!! He is so eager to learn how to read, so we are starting! Thank you for sharing your ideas!!