We actually don’t own a whole lot of Dr. Seuss books, so when I got a letter from the kids’ school saying they’d be dressing up for Dr. Seuss Day I had to do some searching for Dr. Seuss dress up ideas!
March 2nd is National Read Across America Day and also Dr. Seuss’s birthday, so many schools celebrate Dr. Seuss week in conjunction with Read Across America Week from March 1-March 5.
Schools may do a variety of activities: reading, crafts, silly hat day or silly socks day, wacky Wednesday, and the most fun: letting kids dress up as their favorite Dr. Seuss characters! What better way to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday than dressing up as some of his most popular book characters?
I LOVE themed events and think it’s so awesome when school can be FUN. But I don’t do well with last minute stuff. If I were running a school y’all know I’d have these events on the calendar months in advance, or at least early February 😉 I just am a planner that way and last-minute stuff stresses me out!
I asked the kids what favorite character they wanted to dress as and really we didn’t know a whole lot of them. We own The Cat in the Hat
and that’s about it as far as the character books of Dr. Seuss are concerned.
Here are the Dr. Seuss dress up ideas we came up with!
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Easy Costume Ideas for Dr. Seuss Day: Cat in the Hat
Kye immediately said he wanted to be The Cat in the Hat! Though you can buy Cat in the Hat costumes online, I decided to search on Pinterest and hunted on Amazon and came up with a cute, simple costume idea as a great way to have Kye participate in the fun. No need to buy some fancy Seuss Costume when I could easily make it myself with supplies laying around the house, right?
Here’s my step by step tutorial for an easy DIY costume!
To make the Cat in the Hat hat we used:
- white poster board (cut in half) or construction paper
- red paint (or even permanent markers) – you could also use red felt if desired but I wanted to keep this hat craft simple!
- painters tape
- stapler
- paper plate
Instructions:
- Cut the poster board in half longways
- Put painters tape down to make stripes
- Paint the untaped areas red to create the red stripes on this fun cat hat!
- Cut out the center of the paper plate (I had to keep cutting ours wider and wider to fit his head!)
- Staple the top portion of the hat to the plate!
I already had a black shirt for Kye (thanks to our Halloween outfits) and just ordered a Red Sequin Bowtie from Amazon to complete the look.
He was SO excited and I thought it turned out pretty cute 🙂 A simple Seuss Hat for a pretty cute Seuss Cat who was ready to party it up in celebration of the big Dr Seuss day!
You could also easily add a white piece of felt (or even ribbon!) to the white circle along the hat to give it a bit more body and fluff for this iconic character Seuss inspired look. I love that this simple fun craft was perfect to allow young children to help and was such an easy diy cat in the hat look, no sewing skills required 😉 Heck, I didn’t even have to pull out the hot glue gun!
Dr Seuss Day Costume Idea: Cindy Lou Who
Since Britt was little, people have randomly told us that she looks like Cindy Lou Who from How The Grinch Stole Christmas (random side note but did you know the sister from Gossip Girl was Cindy Lou Who in the Jim Carrey movie version?).
My goal for these costumes was to spend as little money as possible and the bow tie ended up being the only legit purchase I had to make (along with the poster board and some pipe cleaners!) Thankfully, you can find most if not all these materials on Amazon or your local craft store!
This ended up being a really fun costume! All I did for Britt was put her hair up in pigtails and wrap a pipe cleaner around each one! I had her wear a pink dress to school with cute pink bows in her hair and she was good to go. She looked adorable and for sure makes a cute Cindy Lou Who!
Other DIY Dr. Seuss Dress Up Ideas
If your kid has their own favorite Dr. Seuss character, fortunately, most of his character designs are so simple they’re really easy to turn into costumes!
- A yellow shirt, red hat, and a paper plate with drawn on or painted-on green eggs and ham
- A red t-shirt with a circular cut out for Thing 1 and Thing 2
- A yellow shirt with paper red fish and blue fish pinned to it
- A yellow shirt with a green felt star for the Star Bellied Sneeches
- An orange shirt with a yellow felt mustache for the Lorax
Short on Time? Easy Dr. Seuss Dress Up Ideas to Order:
So often the schools will hit me with these dress up days and I’m not prepared or have way too much going on to even think about coming up with something creative and crafty.
Thank goodness for Amazon, am I right?
Here are some super cute Dr. Seuss themed dress up ideas that are perfect for Read Across America Week (and then you can pack ’em up and do a Dr Seuss-themed Halloween too!):
Dr. Seuss Birthday Dress Up Ideas: Final Thoughts!
The kids had a GREAT TIME dressing up and it was fun seeing the teachers and staff dressed up as well. What a great idea! It was actually a bit of an educational week for me as I learned about several must-read Dr. Seuss books that we need to add to our book collection! Since all of Dr. Seuss books were on sale that week I bought Green Eggs and Ham
.
Kye instantly fell in love with it and read the entire thing by himself on the first try. He took it to school to read to his class completely on his own. His teacher said he did awesomely and read with so much expression! It made me want to go out and buy all the Dr. Seuss books available as they make GREAT early-reader books and are FUN for the kids to read!
What are some of your family’s favorite Dr. Seuss books? I’m on the hunt for the best ones to add to our little collection!
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