Start the school year off by decorating your classroom with a Cat in the Hat theme. Use pictures of the cat, the fish in his bowl and Thing 1 and Thing 2 around the classroom walls. Over a traditional bulletin board, use red construction paper and white poster board to create a bulletin board shaped like the cat's famous hat. Outline your chalkboard and other bulletin boards with red and white striped borders. Paint a cardboard box red to resemble the red wooden box in the book and store treats or prizes in it.
For younger students, focus on reading "The Cat in the Hat" and "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" with daily activities or assignments related to the books. Use Cat in the Hat word searches, or ask the students to list their own ideas for rainy day activities. Make cookies with a Cat in the Hat theme or tell students make their own hats from paper bags. Older students will enjoy science lessons and experiments that tie into "The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That!" topics.
Give your classroom's Halloween celebration a literary theme by asking students to come dressed as their favorite Cat in the Hat characters or props. Serve cake with pink frosting and make flubber or gak from glue and Borax and call it "voom." The Cat in the Hat also makes an easy theme costume idea for your school's teachers. Teachers can come as their favorite characters to tie their own Halloween costumes into the same educational theme.
The Cat in the Hat can be tied into a lesson plan for almost any subject. An art lesson could ask children to draw what they would store in their own red wooden boxes, or tell the children to draw what Thing 1 and Thing 2 would do at their own homes. Younger students can use the books to practice basic vocabulary, while older students can write their own stories about what they would do if the Cat in the Hat came to their homes or tell the stories from the cat's perspective. Science projects can involve determining other ways to remove a pink ring out of a tub besides using your mother's white dress or correlate to the topics on the PBS television show.