By ClaireOn

Go, Dog. Go! is a classic children’s book in the style of Dr. Seuss that has helped several generations of children learn to read since it was first published in 1961. Although our preschoolers aren’t reading quite yet, they love to listen to the memorable rhymes, repetitive words and silly adventures of the iconic characters in Dr. Seuss – and Dr. Seuss-style – books.

But beyond the bedtime giggles, Go, Dog. Go! and its Dr. Seuss siblings are are a treasure trove of preschool learning concepts. Colors, numbers, animals, phonics, sequences, the list goes on… .

This week, I introduced our boys to Go, Dog. Go! and was a little nervous about their reaction. Truth be told, our boys had never really been that interested in Dr. Seuss books. Honestly, I never knew that a child COULDN’T like Dr. Seuss. Didn’t they all? But our boys have never been ones to go along with the current. So when I first tried reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish a while back, I was a little dejected but not all that surprised when they lost interest after a few pages and requested something different.

Fast forward to this week, and with the prompting of our Peaceful Preschool “Letter G” lesson plan, I decided to give Go, Dog. Go! a try. But this time, I did it a bit differently. Rather than just sitting down with the book and crossing my fingers, I gathered my boys and told them we were going to do a mystery scavenger hunt for objects around the house. Then, we would get to use the objects to play a game while reading a new book.

The jumping up and down to choruses of “YAYYYYYY!!” told me we were off to a good start.

Here was our scavenger hunt list:

  • car
  • boat
  • house
  • tree
  • hat
  • helicopter
  • stop light

I also grabbed our collection of peg dolls, a tea towel and a tray and headed outside. Because doing inside things outside is always more fun, isn’t it?

By the way, if you don’t have colored peg dolls, I highly recommend them. I consider them a foundational element of a preschool toy collection. They are so versatile! They are great for color recognition and counting games but their uses are almost endless for imaginative play. I find our boys inserting them into their play quite regularly and in the most creative ways.

Now, back to the activity…

Colors, Sequences and Word Recognition

As I read through the book the first time, we worked on colors, sequences and word recognition. But of course it was much more fun than that makes it sound.

For colors, I had our kids place peg dolls on the matching color dogs on each page. They liked to try to grab the right color peg doll as fast as possible.

For sequences, I had them line up peg dolls in the same color sequences represented by the dogs on the pages.

For word recognition, I had them hold up the objects we had gathered during our scavenger hunt when they heard me read the name of the object. They decided to take it one step further by placing their object on top of the picture of the object in the book.

The boys decided to do a little impromptu stacking but the wind came along and put an end to that.

Memory Game

Next, we did a little memory work. I laid out all our scavenger hunt objects on the tray and asked the kiddos to look at the objects and try to remember what was there. Then I covered the tray with the tea towel. I asked them to name all the objects they could remember seeing. It’s so much fun seeing which objects stuck in their memory and which ones didn’t. And, of course, they each remembered different things.

We played the game 2 or 3 times and then we moved on. I try not to overplay an activity. Better to keep them wanting more rather than getting bored or burned out.

Introduce Prepositions

Lastly, Go, Dog. Go! is a fantastic book for introducing prepositions to your preschooler – because there are A LOT of them! Prepositions are words that describe an object’s location relative to something else. But boy that’s a dull concept to try to explain to a child. It’s much more fun to show them hands-on! And it’s so easy.

One at a time, I asked the boys to take one object and place it [on/under/around/in/next to/insert preposition of your choice here] another object. For example, put the hat on the boat. Put the boat under the tree. Put the car in the house.

We briefly practiced putting objects near one another and far away.

Then we combined our color recognition skills and our preposition skills by mimicking some of the illustrations in the book. For example, the blue dog on the house, the yellow dog under the tree.

Finally, we played a game that I thought would be a bit too much of a mental stretch for them but they ended up having so much fun they asked to play the game over and over, at bedtime and again the next day. I used my preposition cards courtesy of The Peaceful Preschool but these don’t need to be fancy. Write down some prepositions on index cards or cut-up pieces of paper and you’re good to go.

I gave my 5 year old a few of the preposition cards and told him what each word said. I then gave my 3 year old a few of the objects from our scavenger hunt. I instructed them to hold up the corresponding card or object as they hear me say the word while I read the book. They needed a little help with this at first but they quickly got the hang of it and ended up in squeals of laughter as they tried to keep up with the pace of hearing their words called out.

To keep your kiddos from getting frustrated the first time around, I would start with just one preposition or object so they can really focus on that one word. As they get better, you can level up the challenge by giving them an additional card or object.

More Ideas for Preposition Games

If your kiddos aren’t ready for preposition cards, or maybe they just need to get up and MOVE! … Head outside and play some preposition games.

Call out a movement to your child and see how well they understand their prepositions. For example:

“stand ON the rock”

“jump OVER the branch”

“crawl UNDER the mailbox”

“gallup AROUND the pile of leaves”

“stand NEXT to the tree”

“hide BETWEEN the bushes”

“skip THROUGH the grass”

“jump DOWN the step”

Go At Your Child’s Pace

I know what you’re thinking. This sounds like a lot of activities to do with one book. Won’t my child get overwhelmed?

I like to lay out a feast of ideas and you can pick and choose the ones that you think will fit your child best. But as always, go at your child’s pace. Start with one activity and if your child is enjoying it, linger there and let him play until he’s content. If it’s not working, move on to the next.

Just like with books, reading one or two books and engaging deeply with them is far preferable to superficially reading through a big pile of books. Letting your child explore one activity to her heart’s content is going to help her brain fully understand a concept. Once she has mastered it, she will move on. So don’t be afraid to only get to one activity. If it is delighting your child, keep doing it.

Where there is delight, there is learning.