EDUCATOR RESOURCE GUIDE

Presents

Dr. Seuss’s
The Cat in the Hat
Table of Contents
Synopsis ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
Curriculum Connections & EALRs .................................................................................................. 4
A Thing or Two About Dr. Seuss ...................................................................................................... 5-6
A Chat with R. Hamilton Wright, Director ................................................................................... 7
About the Set and Costumes ............................................................................................................. 8-10
What Would You Do? The Moral Message of The Cat in The Hat ...................................... 11-12
Why Johnny Can Read: Dr. Seuss and Literacy .......................................................................... 13-14
Making Super Stories like Dr. Seuss ............................................................................................... 15
Rain or Shine – Activities for the Classroom or Home ........................................................... 16-17
Words & Phrases That Might Be New to You ............................................................................. 18
Activity Pages .......................................................................................................................................... 19-20
Booklist ...................................................................................................................................................... 21
Evaluation Form ..................................................................................................................................... 22

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SYNOPSIS

Sally and her brother, beyond bored, stare out from their house at a cold, wet
day. With their mother gone and nothing planned, a dull day looms large.
Things take a dramatic turn when the Cat in the Hat swoops in, promising
the kids good games to play. Their pet Fish, however, insists that the Cat, no
matter what he promises, should not be in the house while their mother is out.

To prove his tricks are good fun, the Cat balances Fish, still in his bowl, atop
an umbrella. Then the Cat constructs a tall tower of balancing objects, adding
a book, teacup, cake and rake to his act, and begins hopping on top of a ball.
Of course the tower and Cat come crashing down. The boy and Sally watch the
disaster unfold in slow motion. Fish is fine, but his protests grow more insistent.

A whole new level of chaos erupts when the Cat brings in a large
red wooden crate. He opens the box, and Thing One and Thing Two
run out, wearing red suits and topped with wild blue hair. They
politely shake hands with Sally and her brother, and then explode
into action. The children are not sure what to do. The Things pull out
kites and fly them down the hall, knocking over pictures on the wall.
They rampage around the house, spreading mayhem through the
bedrooms and back again, making big bumps and thumps and doing
“all kinds of bad tricks.”

They have thrown the home into unbelievable disarray when Fish, shaking with fear, sees a
glimpse of Mother returning home. The boy quickly takes charge. He captures the acrobatic Things
with nets and insists that Cat box them up and take them away. The Cat does as he is told; he locks
up the box and leaves with a sad smile, but the trail of ruin remains. Sally and her brother don’t
know what to do. Some tense moments pass. Then the Cat re-appears driving his extraordinary
picking-up machine and promising to clean
everything up. Using the machine’s mechanical
hands, Cat puts back the cake, the rake, the gown,
the milk, strings, dishes, fan, cup, ship and finally,
the Fish. Then the Cat leaves with a tip of his hat.
It’s unbelievable but true: he has returned the
house almost completely to its original order. The
siblings replace a few chairs, put away a ball. They
sit back down quickly in their window seats. It
appears as if they’ve never moved. Their mother
enters and doesn’t suspect a thing. But what answer
will she get when she asks about their day?

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CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS & EALRs
Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat touches on many themes and ideas. Here are a few we believe
would make good Curriculum Connections: Imagination, Creativity, Responsibility, Reading,
Acrobatics, Rhyming, Adaptation.

We believe that seeing the show and using our Educator Resource Guide can help you meet the
following EALRs:

State Standards
1. The student understands and applies arts knowledge and skills.
Theatre 1.1 Understand arts concepts and vocabulary, specifically, identifies and describes
characters, setting, actions, conflict, sounds.
1.2 Develops theatre skills and techniques.
1.4 Understands and applies audience conventions in a variety of settings and
performances of theatre.
3. Theatre: The student communicates through the arts (dance, music, theatre, and visual arts).
3.1 Uses theatre to express feelings and present ideas.
3.2 Uses theatre to communicate for a specific purpose.
1. The student understands and uses different skills and strategies to read.
Reading 1.1 Use word recognition skills and strategies to read and comprehend text.
1.2 Use vocabulary (word meaning) strategies to comprehend text.
1.3 Build vocabulary through wide reading.
1.4 Apply word recognition skills and strategies to read fluently.
2. The student understands the meaning of what is read.
2.1 Demonstrate evidence of reading comprehension.
2.2 Understand and apply knowledge of text components to comprehend text.
2.3 Expand comprehension by analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing information and
ideas in literary and informational text.
2.4 Think critically and analyze author’s use of language, style, purpose, and perspective
in literary and informational text.
3. The student reads different materials for a variety of purposes.
3.1 Read to learn new information.
3.2 Read to perform a task.
1. The student uses listening and observation skills and strategies to gain understanding.
Communication 1.1 Uses listening and observation skills and strategies to focus attention and interpret
information.
1.2 Understands, analyzes, synthesizes, or evaluates information from a variety of sources.
Writing 1. The student understands and uses a writing process.
EALR 2: Inquiry. Big Idea: Inquiry (INQ). Core Content: Making Observations
Science Students learn that scientific investigations involve trying to answer questions by making
observations or trying things out, rather than just asking an adult. Children are naturally
curious about nearly everything—butterflies and clouds, and why the Moon seems to follow
them at night. The essence of this standard is to channel students’ natural curiosity about the
world, so that they become better questioners, observers, and thinkers, laying the groundwork
for increasing understanding and abilities in science inquiry in the years to come.

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A THING OR TWO ABOUT DR. SEUSS
• Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as
the beloved Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard Street in
Springfield, Massachusetts.

• His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, had worked in her father’s

bakery before marrying Ted’s father, often memorizing the names
of the pies that were on special each day and “chanting” them to
her customers—“Apple, mince, lemon – peach, apricot, pineapple
– blueberry, coconut, custard and squash!” If Ted had difficulty
getting to sleep, she would sing him her “pie-selling chants” and
read bedtime stories to him with the same rhythm. As an adult, Ted
credited his mother with both his ability and desire to create the
rhymes for which he became so well known.

• His father owned a brewery until the onset of Prohibition, a time in the 1920s when buying and
selling alcohol was made illegal. Ted’s father then took a job as superintendent of city parks, which
included the local zoo. There, young Ted spent many days drawing the animals and eventually
developing his own unique style. Though Ted would later gain fame because of his unique artistic
style, he never once had an art lesson.

• When he was 14 years old, Ted collected tinfoil for the World War I war effort, planted potatoes in
a two-acre victory garden (which he forgot to harvest) and was among the top ten Boy Scouts in
Springfield in selling United States Liberty Bonds. Ted stood on the stage for a ceremony with the
other nine boys to receive an award from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Ted was last in line. When
Roosevelt reached for the tenth award, it was not there. Someone had counted wrong. “What’s
this little boy doing here?” Roosevelt thundered, and instead of explaining things the scoutmaster
speedily escorted Ted from the stage. Although he had never experienced it before, Ted developed
terrible stage fright and from that time on was horribly shy of public appearances.

• Dr. Seuss was not a doctor, although Ted did consider pursuing a Ph.D. in English. After graduating
from Dartmouth, he went to Oxford University in London, where he studied literature. Though
his Oxford notebooks include some notes on the lectures, they reveal a much greater love for
doodling. One day after class, his classmate Helen Palmer (who would become his first wife)
looked over at his notebook. “You’re crazy to be a professor. What you really want to do is draw,”
she told him. “That’s a very fine flying cow!” Ted realized that Helen was right. He really did want
to draw. So, he left higher education, returned to the U.S. and became a cartoonist.

• As a magazine cartoonist, Ted began signing his work under the name of “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss.”
(Theophrastus was the name of the toy stuffed dog he’d had since he was a little boy and that
he kept with him all through his life.) He later shortened that to “Dr. Seuss.” And that’s how Ted
Geisel became Dr. Seuss. He also has written books under the name Theo LeSieg—Geisel spelled
backwards.

Continued on the next page...

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 • Even though most people pronounce his name Soose (like it rhymes with
goose) the Seuss in his real middle name is pronounced Zoice (like it rhymes
with voice).

• Dr. Seuss worked as a writer and cartoonist at various magazines before

being hired to draw ads for a pesticide company. He drew nasty looking bugs
for 15 years.

• It was when Dr. Seuss was returning to the U.S. from a European vacation, by boat, that he wrote
his first children’s book. His boredom on the long trip inspired him to write a poem to the rhythm
of the ship’s engine. The result was the book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,
which was rejected, depending on the version of the story he told, by either 20, 26, 27, 28, or
29 publishers. The book was finally published and became a hit. But Dr. Seuss didn’t become a
household name until he wrote The Cat in the Hat in 1957.

• Ted’s memories of Springfield can be seen throughout his work. Drawings of Horton the
Elephant meandering along streams in the Jungle of Nool, for example, mirror the waterways in
Springfield’s Forest Park. And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street is not only named after a
real street, it is filled with Springfield imagery, including a look-alike of Mayor Fordis Parker on the
reviewing stand, and police officers riding red motorcycles, the traditional color of Springfield’s
famed Indian Motorcycles.

• Geisel had no children of his own. When asked how he was able to write so well for children when
he didn’t have any he said, “You make ‘em, I amuse ‘em.”

• Dr. Seuss claimed his ideas started with doodles: “I may doodle a couple of animals; if they bite
each other, it’s going to be a good book.”

• Dr. Seuss’s birthday, March 2nd, has been chosen as Read Across America Day
by the National Education Association (NEA). Each year it’s a day for kids,
students and teachers to focus on reading and how important and entertaining
it can be.

• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and three Academy Awards, Seuss was the author and
illustrator of 44 children’s books, some of which have been made into animated television specials
and films for children of all ages. Even after his death in 1991, Dr. Seuss continues to be the best-
selling author of children’s books in the world.

Information excerpted and compiled from:

Seussville – http://www.seussville.com/#/author
Dr. Seuss National Memorial – http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm
Encyclopedia of World Biographies – http://www.notablebiographies.com/
Kidzworld – http://www.kidzworld.com/article/4013-dr-seuss-biography

For a complete biography of Dr. Seuss, go to http://www.seussville.com/#/author

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A CHAT WITH R. HAMILTON WRIGHT, DIRECTOR
Please tell us a little bit about your working process.

The more I direct the more I am fascinated by the tension that is

created in my own mind by two competing impulses—one is to
control the situation, to essentially tell the actors what to do and the
other is to just let them find their way—give them nudges here and
there and see what falls out. Now, I think there is a middle ground
somewhere, a balance between the two—something respectful and
a little democratic and hopefully a great deal of fun. But it really does
seem to me that most of the truly splendid moments that are created
in rehearsal—at least in my experience—are arrived at by the actors
themselves, because of the energy that they create through their hard
work with, of course, the help of the playwright. So much of the work
of a director is to offer the actors an environment that encourages exploration and play and hard
work. I try to do that. And then…sometimes I just tell them what to do.

What is a particularly interesting or unusual challenge on this project, and how are you setting
out to solve it?

Because we are using the marvelous design for Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat that originated with
the National Theatre’s production in London, we have a far more complete outline than we might
be used to. The scenic design and the costume design and the basic flow of the play are set and so
the challenge for the actors and myself is to use the National production as a starting point and then
allow ourselves the freedom to make it our own. As theater artists, we are always borrowing ideas
and techniques from each other. There truly is nothing new under the sun. So we’ll take from our
friends in England what they learned from their creative process and then give free rein to our own
impulses and see where they lead us.

What in your childhood got you to where you are today?

I spent a good deal of time as a child by myself. I have two older sisters who I love dearly but who
wanted to have nothing to do with me when I was seven or eight or ten years old. Most of my friends
from school lived miles and miles away from our house and so I spent a lot of time in the woods
behind our house making things up. Typical young boy things—an old derelict cabin became a
mountain hideout and the little swamp surrounded by some big cottonwoods was a steaming South
American jungle. I read Tarzan of the Apes and The Swiss Family Robinson and Sherlock Holmes
stories while sitting up against the trunk of an old cedar tree. It was where my imagination was
let loose. Years later, in the first year of college, I saw a rehearsal of a play. Everyone seemed to be
making things up. It seemed like a marvelous thing to do. Forty years later I’m still doing it.

R. Hamilton Wright has been an actor for over thirty-five years in which time he has performed in
over 130 professional productions. He has directed a number of plays and worked as a playwright on
occasion. He also enjoys building tables. He is absolutely thrilled to be working at Seattle Children’s
Theatre.
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ABOUT THE SET AND COSTUMES

The set and costume designs for Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat are happening in an unusual way.
Normally, our directors work with designers to create the look of a show, but part of what SCT
got when we agreed to do this script, which was originally performed at the National Theatre in
London, is the chance to use their designs. The designs look so much like what Dr. Seuss drew
that they are exactly right for the show. We get a package with pictures from Dr. Seuss’s book,
photographs of the original production and drawings of the set and costumes. We will use that
information to build them in our scene and costume shops.

Because the design comes from a theater company in Britain, the numbers you see on the
sketches are measurements in metric notation—in millimeters. Good thing, because a house that
was 2548 feet wide would be way too big to fit in our theater.

Boy’s costume. Notice Sally’s skirt with the same kind of marks as
the marks that look like Boy’s costume
pencil lines.

If you look closely at the costumes in the photographs you’ll see that they not only look like the
shape of the clothes in the book, they also have been painted in places with markings that match
the lines in the drawings.
Continued on the next page...

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 Set model of the house exterior

House exterior as seen in Seuss’s book

Technical drawing of the house exterior

It is easy to use the book to make some of the set pieces, like the front of the house. It is a flat
object, just like the drawing in the book is a flat picture so it can be drawn and built pretty much
the same way.

Continued on the next page...

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 The picking-up machine as seen in the book and in the National Theatre’s production. The extra people you see dressed as
cats are puppeteers who help drive the machine and clean up the mess.

Some of the other pieces are much harder to make. The picking-up machine is only seen twice in the
book—once from the right side, and the other time you can see part of the back. In the play it needs
to be 3D. The Cat needs to ride on it and it has to actually pick things up. The designer had to imagine
what it would look like from both sides and even from above so that people could figure out how to
actually build such a crazy machine.

Technical drawings of the picking-up machine

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WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
THE MORAL MESSAGE OF THE CAT IN THE HAT
The Cat in the Hat has no moral, in the Aesop’s Fable sense of the word. Just about everything that
everyone does in The Cat in the Hat would clearly be off limits in real life, starting with using a
talking goldfish as an all-day babysitter. The Cat comes, the Cat wreaks fun havoc, the Cat cleans up
and goes away, leaving no trace of his presence. Except, as the nameless narrating boy relates:
...our mother came in
And she said to us two
“Did you have any fun?
Tell me. What did you do?”

The Cat has cleaned up the physical mess he made, but has left a moral mess behind: what
should Sally and her brother do?

One mother tells a story about this moment in the book.

My daughter always looks up at me and says, “I would tell you.” But I don’t believe her. I think it’s
quite possible that the Cat in the Hat has already been here, and she’s just telling me what I want
to hear.

Of course, in real life any mother would want to know if an intruder had come into her house while
her children were there alone, however fun he seemed to be and however neatly he picked up after
himself. It would also be a very, very good idea for those children to tell her about it. But The Cat in
the Hat, clearly a wacky fantasy, lets us think about things in a fun way that we will, at many times
in our life, have to think about very seriously indeed.

According to Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, how the children think about
answering their mother’s question will give insight into how far along they are on the stages of
moral development. There are three main levels:

1. Self-interest – what’s in it for me? At this level, individuals try to get what they want and avoid
punishment. In some ways, the fish-in-the-pot embodies this attitude. As he sees the Mother
approaching, he shrieks:
“Look! Look!”
And our fish shook with fear.
“Your mother is on her way home!
Do you hear?
Oh, what will she do to us?
What will she say?
Oh, she will not like it The Fish in the Pot – doing his
To find us this way!” best in a difficult situation

Continued on the next page...

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At this stage of moral development, the children might decide to conceal the truth because the
Cat has removed all the evidence—they can avoid punishment, and hope the Cat will come back
for more fun. Or, they might decide to reveal the Cat’s antics because they are frightened of what
the Cat might do if he does return.

2. Conventional Morality – what are the rules? At times, the fish-in-the-pot embodies this sort of
reasoning as well, shrieking at the Cat:
“You SHOULD NOT be here
When our mother is not.
You get out of this house!”
Said the fish in the pot.

If the children are at this stage of moral development,

the children might tell their mother the truth about the
Cat if they believe they have broken a rule and should
be disciplined for doing so. On the other hand, if they
have NOT been given a specific rule to the contrary
(from somebody with more status than a goldfish)
they might feel under no obligation to reveal the recent
presence of the mischievous Cat.

3. Post-Conventional Morality – This stage involves

understanding that compromise between competing
points of view is necessary for society to function.
It also involves being able to see the world from Pyramid illustrating Kohlberg’s six stages of moral
reasoning. From the bottom up, each two stages can be
another’s point of view while upholding universal combined to make a total of three levels: 1) trying to get
ethical principles. What would the Mother do what you want; 2) trying to think and act as you have
been taught to; and 3) trying to determine for yourself
in their shoes, and why? Many psychologists, what right and wrong means.
including Kohlberg, doubted that many people could
consistently achieve the highest level of moral development. It does seem daunting, and perhaps
beyond the range of the fish-in-the-pot, but Dr. Seuss understood how important it is to see from
another’s point of view. His final question points us out of the book in the direction of empathy.
What would you do?
If your mother asked you?

Resources:
An interesting comment-board discussion of moral and ethical dimensions of The Cat in the Hat
– http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233093.The_Cat_in_the_Hat
A New Yorker article which both indulges in and mocks multiple over-analysis of The Cat in the
Hat – http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/12/23/021223crat_atlarge
Online chapter from W.C. Crain. (1985). Theories of Development. Prentice-Hall. pp. 118-136,
outlining Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning – http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/
kohlberg.htm
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WHY JOHNNY CAN READ: DR. SEUSS AND LITERACY
The more that you read the more you will know
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
– Dr. Seuss, in I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

Dr. Seuss, as usual, got it right. Reading and

opportunity go hand in hand. But during the 1950s
people in the United States worried that fewer of
their children were learning. Why Can’t Johnny
Read? asked the title of a famous book by Rudolf
Flesch. In 1940, 2.9 percent of Americans 14 years
and older couldn’t read. In 1950 that number
had actually increased, to 3.2 percent. Not a big
jump, but for the first time in U.S. history a larger
percentage of the population was illiterate. Why?

John Hersey, writing in LIFE magazine in 1954,

blamed the Dick and Jane books that schools
used to teach children to read. He wrote that Dick and Jane readers from the 1950s featured stilted writing
and artificially idealized characters
they featured, “insipid illustrations depicting
the slicked-up lives of…abnormally courteous,
unnaturally clean boys and girls” and asked, “Why should (school books)
not have drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses
among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Seuss, Walt Disney?”

In 1954, when Hersey wrote his article, Seuss was the least-known name
on that list, although Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel, writing under the pen
name Dr. Seuss, had already produced some successful children’s books,
including Horton Hatches an Egg and If I Ran the Zoo. Ted Geisel had a love
for rhythm and rhyme—the sound as well as the sense of words—which
he absorbed from his family. All his grandparents came from Germany; he
grew up speaking German as well as English. His mother, Henrietta Seuss
Geisel, would often chant him to sleep, using rhymes remembered from
when she was a girl. Wordplay filled Ted’s youth. The family’s beer brewery, Kalmbach and Geisel,
was nicknamed Come Back and Guzzle. His sister Margaretha called herself Marnie Mecca Ding
Ding Guy. Ted’s family also nurtured his talent for drawing. Theodor Robert Geisel, Ted’s father,
managed a zoo, and Ted drew pictures that transformed the zoo animals. His mother loved the
“Wynnmph,” with ears nine feet long, that Ted drew on the wall of their house.

Ted Geisel took the hint in Hersey’s article seriously, and met with William Spaulding, a children’s
book editor, who challenged him to “write me a story that first-graders can’t put down.” Spaulding
gave him a list of 348 simple words, and insisted that the book use only 225 of them. Ted thought
writing a book with only 225 words would be easy. It wasn’t. Sometimes he got so frustrated that
he threw his manuscript across the room.
Continued on the next page...

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 It took him nine months to produce The Cat in the Hat. And he didn’t
quite succeed in meeting Spaulding’s challenge. He used 223 of the
words that were on Spaulding’s list, but 13 that were not. And The Cat
did not replace Dick and Jane; schools found his antics too subversive,
and continued to use the old-style readers for many more years.

However, when The Cat in the Hat came out in bookstores in 1957, it
made a huge hit with the public. By 1960 it had sold nearly a million
copies. It has remained just as popular ever since. In 2009 The Cat in
the Hat sold 452,258 copies.

Ted Geisel cared deeply about literacy. That concern motivated his
work, and also his support of the psychology professor Terry Cronan.
Peter Newell’s The Hole Book was Dr.
Seuss’s favorite children’s book when
She developed a literacy program using African-American and
he was a child. Like his own work, it Hispanic students as tutors. The tutors brought Seuss books to low-
features rhyme and wacky humor. income families, and helped them build a bookcase in which to keep
them. Dr. Cronan favored Seuss books because of their rhythm and repetition and because the
characters are universal—not defined by an ethnic background.

As Dr. Seuss books became popular, literacy began to rise again. In 1979, the illiteracy rate in the
United States was less than a fifth of what it was in 1950. Literacy among African Americans and
other ethnic minorities rose even more quickly. Was Dr. Seuss responsible? Difficult to say, with
so many other factors at work. But are his books effective tools to promote literacy? Without a
doubt. Generations of children have been lured into a love of books by Dr. Seuss. We know today
that poetry and the rhythm of language plays an important role in learning to read. Very young
children who cannot recite a nursery rhyme are more likely to have trouble with reading in the
future. And “shared reading” in which adult caregivers read to and with young children also plays
a crucial role. So the fact that Dr. Seuss appeals to adults as well as children helps make them even
more useful literacy tools. And literacy is crucial to success, to feeling that, as Dr. Seuss wrote in
Oh, the Places You’ll Go:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go.

Literacy research and information:

National Center for Education Statistics – http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp#illiteracy
National Center for Biotechnology Information – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC2528656/
The Royal Children’s Hospital – http://www.rch.org.au/emplibrary/ccch/PB13_Literacy_
EarlyChildhood.pdf
The UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities – http://www.healthychild.
ucla.edu/Publications/Documents/Readingand%20Early%20Literacy0601.pdf

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MAKING SUPER STORIES LIKE DR. SEUSS
Dr. Seuss can tell the craziest stories but they still remind you of how you feel about things in
your real life. A giant cat in a striped hat might never have come knocking on your door, but you
know what it’s like to make a mess you might not be able to clean up before your mother sees
it. You probably will never be asked to eat green eggs and ham, but what is this broccoli stuff
everyone wants you to try? And an elephant is not likely to carry you around on a flower, but you
know what it’s like when people won’t listen to what you have to say.

Dr. Seuss knows that to tell a good story you need to help readers understand the characters in it
and what they are feeling and doing. He doesn’t only use words to do it. His pictures tell a lot, too.

Let’s take a look at some of the elements that help make a good story.

Who’s in the story?

Stories need a hero, but it doesn’t have to be someone who wears a cape and can fly through the
air. It can simply be someone who is trying to be a good person and do what’s right. But if the
hero is able to do what they want too easily, that’s not much of a story. It would be like playing
games by yourself all the time—there aren’t any surprises and you always know who is going
to win. That’s why the story needs someone who is trying to keep the hero from her goal. You
can call him the bad guy or the villain, but he doesn’t have to be evil. He just needs to be doing
something that is a problem for the hero.

Who do you think is the hero of The Cat in The Hat? Who is the villain?

Where does the story happen?

Every story has to take place somewhere. It doesn’t have to be in a place that’s exactly like
where you live. There are some very exciting stories that happen under the sea or on a different
planet. But even a strange place can be something like one you know. That can help you better
understand the story and the people in it.

Where do Sally and her brother live? How is it like where you live? How is it different?

What happens in the story?

This is probably the most fun part. Anything you want can be in a story. The best stories, like
The Cat in the Hat, take you on a trip with a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning often
starts with the normal life of the people in the story. In the middle something happens that
changes things for them. What happens to them is so important that they have to do something
about it. In the end you find out how the changes turn out for everyone.

What are the beginning, middle and end of The Cat in the Hat? What would happen in the end of
the story if the middle changed?

You can take all these parts and use them to make any story you want. You can write it, or draw
it, or act it out. Or all three! What will make all these parts into a great story? Your imagination.

15
RAIN OR SHINE –
ACTIVITIES FOR THE CLASSROOM OR HOME
Whether it’s raining or not, you can have fun with these activities that are all about rain. You
don’t even need to wait for the Cat in the Hat to show up.

Making Rain

You can create a little indoor rain in a jar.

What You Need:

• Large clear jar with a wide mouth
• Hot water
• Food coloring
• Ice cubes on a small plate

Put a small amount of hot water in the jar. Add a drop of food coloring if you like.
Put the plate of ice cubes on top of the jar. Let it sit for a minute.

You will be able to see moisture forming on the bottom of the plate and then you’ll see the
moisture drip down like rain. Rain happens when warm, moist air rises up and hits colder air
above it.

Singing in the Rain

Dress up in rain gear—raincoat, hat and boots. Umbrellas are great to

use, too. Pretend it’s raining inside and there are puddles to play in.
Sing, twirl umbrellas, splash in puddles and use your imagination to
celebrate the rain any way you like.

You might want to watch this clip of Gene Kelly dancing in the movie Singin’ in the Rain to get
some ideas of how much fun you can have enjoying the rain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZYhVpdXbQ

Drops of Rain Picture

Let the rain add its own style to your art.

Cover a work surface with newspaper. Take washable markers and draw a picture of flowers
or trees or anything that needs rain to live and grow. Take an eyedropper filled with water
and squeeze a drop of water onto the picture. Squeeze out more drops in more places on the
drawing. The colors will run and the drawings will change into something new and interesting.

Continued on the next page...

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A Simple Rain Gauge

At times it seems like it’s raining hard enough to fill the ocean. Find
out how much is coming down.

What You Need:

• Glass jar
• Permanent marker
• Ruler

Place the ruler against the side of the glass jar and use the marker to
make a line every half-inch from the bottom of the glass to the top.

Decorate the rain gauge however you like. You can draw designs, add ribbons or just leave it the
way it is.

Place the rain gauge outside under the open sky to collect the rainfall.

When it stops raining, take a look at the gauge and see how much rain really fell.

A Milk Rainbow?

When the rain finally stops and the sun comes out, sometimes
we’re lucky enough to see a rainbow. Until then, try this.

What You Need:

• Red, blue and yellow food coloring
• 1 cup milk
• Dish soap
• Shallow bowl

Pour the milk into the bowl. Add one drop of red, blue and yellow food coloring near the center
of the bowl. Squeeze a drop of dish soap into the center of the bowl. Don’t stir the milk or shake
the bowl.

The dish soap does not mix with the milk. Instead it floats on top and spreads over the surface.
As it spreads, it grabs the food color. Where the colors meet, they combine to form all the colors
of the rainbow. This isn’t the way a real rainbow happens, of course, but at least you get to see
the colors even though there’s no sunshine.

Activity ideas taken from:

Singing in the Rain – http://www.ehow.com/info_12126345_rain-song-activities.html
Rain Drop Art – http://www.ehow.com/info_7893172_raindrop-art-projects-preschoolers.html
Rain Gauge – http://www.education.com/activity/article/rain-gauge/
Milk Rainbow – http://kidzone.ws/science/rainbow.htm
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WORDS & PHRASES THAT MIGHT BE NEW TO YOU
And we did not like it.
Not one little bit. – not at all

We looked!
Then we saw him step in on the mat! – doormat

“A lot of good tricks.

I will show them to you.
Your mother
Will not mind at all if I do.”
tricks – skills, like juggling and balancing
mind – care

“Now! Now! Have no fear.

Have no fear!” said the cat.
Now! Now! – calm down
Have no fear – don’t be afraid

“Put me down!” said the fish.

“I do not wish to fall!” – want

I can fan with the fan

As I hop on the ball!
But that is not all. – I can do more

They should not be here

When you mother is not!
Put them out! Put them out! – make them leave

They are tame. Oh, so tame! – harmless

Then Sally and I

Saw them run down the hall. – through the corridor

So, as fast as I could,

I went after my net. – went to get

One phrase gets used in two slightly different ways:

Then he got up on top
With a tip of his hat. – lifting his hat as a “hello”

And then he was gone

With a tip of his hat. – lifting his hat as a “good-bye”
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 Make Your Own Rhymes
The Cat in the Hat. Say it out loud and you hear how the words “cat” and “hat” sound
very similar. When the ends of words sound the same, they rhyme. In the boxes below
there are phrases with one word missing. Fill in each blank with a word that creates a
rhyme, and then draw a picture of your new phrase in the box.

A snail with a ________________. A frog on a _________________.

A goat in a ________________. A snake eating a ______________.

Create your own rhyme and draw the picture on the back of this page!

A _________________ with a _________________.

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 Let Your Body Tell the Story
Reflection on the Story
Ask your students to sit in a circle on the floor.
Inform your students that you will be passing around a talking stick and that when they
receive it they can share one thing they remember from the story The Cat in the Hat.
Ground Rules: “If someone shares the same thing you were going to share, show me
silently by touching your nose.”
Balancing Act
Have your students find an individual space in the room.
Inform your students that when you say that magical G.O. word that rhymes with throw, you would
like them to pretend to balance a beach ball on one hand.
Encourage your students to make BIG physical choices and to experiment with different levels and
large facial expressions.
Inform your students that when you say that magical G.O. word that rhymes with doe, you would
like them to also balance a tea cup on their toe, without falling.
Ask your students how they might physically change their bodies to balance these two items at the
same time. How do they feel about balancing these items? Are they nervous, confident or focused?
Tell your students that when you say that magical G.O. word that rhymes with bow, you would like
them to pretend to add three large books on their head.
Wander around the room to give your students specific positive feedback.
Tell your students that they may drop their imaginary items.
Allow your students to pretend to balance items of their own choosing. Ask your students to start off
with one item and when you say that magical G.O. word that rhymes with mow, they can add
another one. Encourage your students to use different body parts to balance the items, like their
pinky finger or elbow.
Tell your students that when you tap their shoulder they can tell the class what items they are
balancing.
Tell your students that they may drop their imaginary items.
Clean Machine
Reveal to your students that they will be creating a large cleaning machine similar to the one in The
Cat in the Hat.
Ask your students to come up with a gesture and sound to represent a part of the machine. The
gesture and sound has to be easily repeatable and stay in the same area, so no cartwheels or
screaming.
Ask one student to start. The first student repeats the exact same gesture and sound again and again.
The other students may join in one by one when they feel ready and do their own gesture and sound
effect. Remind your students that the parts of a machine must connect and work with each other or
the machine will not work properly.
Once everyone has joined the machine, you can ask the students to speed up, slow down and
eventually break.
You can repeat this activity and ask your students for suggestions for other machines they could
create. You can also ask your students to create an emotion machine - for example, a cheering up
machine. Once you have successfully created an emotion machine you can take suggestions from
your students for other emotionally endowed machines.
Reflection on the Lesson
Ask your students to sit in a circle.
Pass around the talking stick and have your students share one thing they remembered from
today’s lesson.

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BOOKLIST
For Children & Young Adults: Nonfiction:
The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel
Fiction: Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss
Amelia Bedelia Kathleen Krull
Peggy Parish What was Dr. Seuss like as a child? This
picture book biography focuses on Ted
Born to Read Geisel’s early years, and shows the influences
Judy Sierra that led him to become the imaginative Dr.
Seuss.
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
Dr. Seuss For Adults Working With Children & Young
Adults:
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type
Doreen Cronin Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook
Georgeanne Brennan
A Fish Out of Water
Helen Palmer The Read-Aloud Handbook
Jim Trelease
George and Martha: The Complete Stories of
Two Best Friends The Seuss, the Whole Seuss and Nothing But the
James Marshall Seuss: A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel
Charles D. Cohen
I Want to Be Somebody New!
Robert Lopshire Unplugged Play: No Batteries. No Plugs. Pure
Fun.
Silly Sally Bobbi Conner
Audrey Wood Includes hundreds of kid-tested games for
ages one to ten—no batteries required!
Three Stories You Can Read to Your Cat
Sara Swan Miller Website:
Seussville: Official site of Dr. Seuss and the Cat
in the Hat – www.seussville.com

Booklist prepared by Lisa Jensen,

King County Library System

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HOW DID WE DO?
We’d love to know what was helpful to you as you read and used this guide. Please fill out and
return this short survey to us. We appreciate your feedback.

1. For which play/plays did you use the Educator Resource Guide?
□ Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat □ The Edge of Peace
□ Danny, King of the Basement □ Adventures with Spot
□ The Wizard of Oz □ Crash
□ Dot & Ziggy

2. Was it easy for you to find and download the Educator Resource Guide?
□ Very □ Somewhat □ Not very □ Not at all
3. On a scale of 1 – 5 (5 being the highest), how useful was the Educator Resource Guide?
□ 1 □ 2 □ 3 □ 4 □ 5

4. What did you use from the Educator Resource Guide?

5. Is there something you would like to see included in the Educator Resource Guide that wasn’t here?

6. Which of the following best describes you? I teach:

□ Preschool □ Elementary school □ Middle school
□ High school □ Home school

Other Comments:

THANK YOU!

MAIL to: or EMAIL: or FAX:

Seattle Children’s Theatre schoolshows@sct.org 206.443.0442
201 Thomas Street
Seattle, WA 98109
Attention: School Shows
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