Celebrating Seuss!

The artwork we created to celebrate the world’s best rhymer was based on three of Dr. Seuss’ books. “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!”, “Horton Hears a Who” and “The Cat in the Hat”. We used Mini Canvases and Acrylic paint to show off the swirls and stripes that are so recognizable as Seuss! And finished them off by outlining them in black sharpies.

Our first groups were given a canvas with stripes or ovals. The palate for this project consisted of the pastel colors in “The Places You’ll Go!” The kids painted each section a separate color using a small flat paintbrush. After we dried the canvas, I outlined the words for them to fill in with a small round brush in bright Seuss blue and hot glued a grosgrain ribbon to the top. I loved the artwork…and the message!

The older girls painted my favorite scene from this same book…the hot air balloon. After they sketched the teardrop shaped balloon, they filled in rolling hills underneath. Following the same procedure and using flat and round brushes in various sizes, they filled in their balloons and hills with stripes and they were off to great places!

Our little boys dabbled in a little Thing One and Thing Two project, while the girls made sure that everyone knew that “a person’s a person…no matter how small!” They used two different color blues for their back ground stripes and then peachy pink for Horton’s Flower and red and bright blue for the Cat’s mischievous sidekicks!

I love incorporating art projects to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday. Aside from the fact that millions of children have learned how to read with his crazy characters and tongue tying verses, Dr.Seuss is a great example of persistence and believing in yourself. In order to publish his first book “To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street” was rejected 27 times before Vanguard Press agreed to publish it.