Making Words the Dr. Seuss Way

It’s the end of February and that means one thing: Dr. Seuss’ birthday will be here before you know it! {March 2}.  Dr. Seuss is most definitely the master of silly rhyming words.  One of my favorite books by him is There’s a Wocket in My Pocket!.  It’s filled with silly rhymes, sure to get those giggle boxes going!

In honor of his special day, we did some silly rhyming of our own.  We used the –oy word family, but you can use any word family that is developmentally appropriate for your child as a speller and reader.  {To see more rime ideas for word families, check out Enchanted Learning’s list!}

To prep, I wrote -oy on our large writing paper 12 times and hung it on our easel.

I pulled out 12 different onsets from my colored onset cards {These are from my years as a first grade teacher, BUT I made a free, printable copy that you can download here.}

My son picked two different colored markers: one for real words and one for silly words.  One at a time, he went through the onset cards and added the onset to the rime orally.

We discussed if it was a real or silly word, then he wrote the onset using his color code for real and silly words.

Afterwards, we talked about how Dr. Seuss uses silly words, but in a real way; as if they really mean something.  We looked through the list of silly words and brainstormed ideas of what we could make them mean.  What could a shoy or a zoy  be?  After we had a good laugh {something I need to do more with my kids}, I challenged him to to use two real words and two silly words to create a silly sentence and a drawing to match…Dr. Seuss-style.

He wrote: “The boy has a toy on his zoy and in his droy.”  {zoy= a stinky pair of pants, droy= a tall dresser}.

So, there you have it!  Making words and writing…the Dr. Seuss way!