Mom's Tot School: Creative Table

Because of all of the Magic Tree House activities we've done this week, I kept our Dr. Seuss theme limited to just one day. I pulled out a couple of favorite activities from previous years, and added a couple new ones. I set them out as "invitations" around our dining room table. Take a look:

The Lorax Invitation - Truffula Tree Roll and Cover

I created this activity two years ago (please see 2015 link at the bottom of this post to find the free printable). The kids enjoy these fuzzy pompoms and the finished product is super cute.

Tongs are always optional! Little M&M even swapped the orange pair out for the nearby pink pair to allow himself a better grip.

Honey Pot had school today, so she bounced around from invitation to invitation immediately upon coming home! Love her Cat in the Hat hat!

The Cat in the Hat Invitation - Matching Game

We've been doing this one since 2013! The printable came from Joyfully Weary. There are actually 20 cards total, but when I prepared this for a 2-year-old I wanted to keep it simpler. Definitely time for me to print out the complete set though, because they flew through this!

The Cat in the Hat Invitation - Stamping Patterns

I found a cute set of stamps in the Target Dollar Spot and wanted to include them in today's activities. So I printed this pattern sheet from This Reading Mama.

I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew Invitation - Fine Motor Flowers

This is actually one of our very favorite Dr. Seuss books. And there is no mention of it on Pinterest anywhere! So I came up with our own little fine motor activity to recreate the flowers from "the banks of the beautiful river Wah-Hoo." I cut some white chenille stems in half and poked them into some floral foam I had purchased from the Dollar Tree a while back. For a couple of them, I attached another piece to serve as a second branch. Then I used a circle punch to cut out lots of colorful circles, and used a hole punch through the center.

Little M&M, who is just shy of turning 5 years old, just loved this activity. He spent a good while placing the flowers on the stems. First he tried to include one of each color on each stem, and then he began sorting them by color.

He even had a story going on in his head, because all the little flower circles were talking to each other! This activity provided great fine motor practice, and apparently some wonderful imaginative play too!

This is the finished product, and I think it looks adorable!

When Honey Pot returned from school she gave it a go, but our nearly 7-year-old just wanted to put one flower on each before moving on to a different invitation. But for the preschool set...this is a winning activity!

Horton Hears a Who Invitation - Finding the Speck

I first saw this idea from Inner Child Fun. It is meant to recreate this sad scene from the book, in which Horton searches over 3 million clovers to find the one with his speck of dust!

So I set out two buckets and a collection of pom poms, with only one pom pom containing the "speck of dust." To make the speck I just put a dab of hot glue on one of them.