Reading + Fitness:

Horton Hears a Who Obstacle Course

 

            Today's Snack: Hard-boiled eggs . . . with a nice glass of grape juice.

 

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Supplies:

Several dozen eggs OR mini-pompoms | spoons

 

In outside play space: 20 or 30 chairs, a rope, a garden hose, rope,

balance beam or 2"x4" on blocks, tires,

sidewalk chalk and pavement, small sturdy stepladder, kiddie wading pool,

20 or 30 plastic eggs that you've put the word "Go!" on a piece of paper inside just 3 or 4,

fabric play tunnel or large cardboard boxes duct-taped together,

basketball and basketball hoop,

signs that say "20 Jumping Jacks" and "20 Sit-Ups";

box or plastic tub with straw or sand in which one pompom is hidden

 

Stopwatch | dry erase board and marker or posterboard and pencil

 

If you have a magnifier device and TV set,

such as an "Eye-Clops" game,

this story provides a great opportunity to let kids explore

the amazing mini-world that powerful magnification can show them

 

 

            First, read the all-time favorite Dr. Seuss book, Horton Hears a Who. Discuss the meaning of the line, "A person's a person, no matter how small." Does that affect how the students should treat other people? Discuss, too, the good character traits that Horton exhibits, including perseverance and kindness.

 

 

 

 

Did you know Dr. Seuss wrote this story to encourage Americans to support sending lots of money to the opponents that we defeated in World War II, Germany and Japan, to help them re-build their countries even though they attacked us and killed a lot of our soldiers? That was called the Marshall Plan. For the first time in history, a nation that won a war helped the nations it defeated. It is something of which Americans can always be proud. With this book, Dr. Seuss helped a lot of families see the wisdom of the United States helping the Germans and Japanese recover from the war, and resume being their friend, not their foe.

 

Especially if the weather's nice and you can do this outside, kids will enjoy running through an obstacle course. They will enjoy helping you carry everything outside and back inside, and would really enjoy a chance to help design the obstacle course. Most of it should be on grass, but you might like to have a little pavement for a few of the features.

 

If this is a summer program and kids can get wet, or better yet, do this in their swimsuits, let them run the obstacle course carrying a raw egg on their spoon. Let other students spray them with the garden hose at some point during the obstacle course. If it breaks and they get egg on them, hose them off with the garden hose.

 

Otherwise, if you're indoors or don't want to use eggs, use a mini-pompom from a craft store for each student, to represent the speck that the Who's lived on in the book.

 

Set up the obstacle course for the students to run through one at a time. Time them with a stopwatch and let them run the course numerous times to try to improve their time.

 

            You can set up an obstacle course that loosely follows the story plot. A large cardboard box that contained a stove can have the top half cut out so that the kids can jump in there as a "nest."

 

            You can set up a maze of chairs and hide the child's egg or pompom with a spoon. The child has to move chairs aside or sneak past them to get to the egg or pompom.

 

Then for the rest of the obstacle course, the student has to carry the egg or pompom on the spoon without dropping it or breaking it. If they do, they have to go back to the beginning, get a new egg or put the pompom back on the spoon, and start over.

 

            You can make a wiggly line for the child to follow with a garden hose or long rope.

 

            You can make a balance beam with a piece of lumber on concrete blocks, and set several tires close together for the student to run through, stepping in the middle of each one.

 

            A sturdy stepladder (with, say, 3 or 4 steps) can be set up and the student has to step up the ladder and step down backwards. You don't expect the student to step to the very top of the ladder; just up and down 3 or 4 steps.

 

            You can have a basketball area where the student gets to put down the egg or pompom and make, say, 5 baskets, and another area on pavement where you make a hopscotch course with sidewalk chalk so that the child has to hop with the egg on the spoon through 10-12 squares.

 

            Jumping jacks and sit-ups stations will add to the fitness challenge, and kids love to crawl through a tunnel made of big refrigerator or stove boxes duct-taped together into a tunnel, or you can borrow a preschool's fabric play tunnel if you know of one that has one.

 

            Again, if it's summer, fill a kiddie wading pool with water and take 20 or 30 plastic Easter eggs. Inside just 3 or 4 of them, put a piece of paper with the word "Go!" inside. Then float all the eggs. The student has to search through the eggs at that station and can't go on to the next one until he or she has found the word "Go!"

 

            The last station could be a big box or plastic tub filled with sand or dry straw, or just make a pile on the ground; the student has to search through it, just as Horton had to search through the clover field, to find the "Who's" - a mini-pompom - and run with it and the egg or other pompom to the finish line.

 

            Kids really enjoy watching each other go through an obstacle course like this. Just make sure to establish a rule that the other students must stay out of the racer's way, to keep things fair - they don't want to become another obstacle!

 

            After each student has gone, the others should re-set the obstacle course for the next racer.

 

You can use a dry-erase board and marker to keep track of their times and show the kids about "order" as you record the minutes and seconds it takes each student to complete the obstacle course.