President's Day: Crafts and Activities

President's Day is just around the corner. We are getting ready to celebrate in patriotic fashion.  Here are some of the activities we are doing.

George Washington Cut a Sentence Craftivity

This is a fun twist on the traditional step book. Here's how you make it:

• Stair step 3 pieces of paper. Fold in half and staple at the top.
• Round of the edges to make the shoulders.
• We used patterns to make the face and hat.
• For the eyes, we rounded off squares.
• The hair is polyfill.

After making the books, the children added the sentences.

• Cut off one sentence.
• Cut between the words.
• Put the word with the capital letter first and the word with the period last.
• Manipulate the other words until the sentence makes sense.
• Find the picture to match the sentence.

Abe Lincoln's Cabin Craftivity

Sharing Cherries

There is a tale about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. The kids love this fun activity to learn fair share.

• Roll the dice and count that many cherries.
• Share the cherries between the trees.
• Record the answer on the recording sheet.

President Day Numbers

This is a fun way to remember the numbers associated with president's day while learning to compose and decompose numbers.

• Give the children a number associated with president's day.
• Invite them to build the number on the 10's frames using Abe Lincoln and George Washington heads.
• Color the tens frames to match what they built.
• Write the numerals to represent the number. 

This is a great way to move from the conceptual level (building the tens frames), to the pictorial (coloring the tens frames), to the abstract (writing the numerals.

George Washington and

Abe Lincoln Story Problem

Here is another example of children developing understanding at the conceptual level.

• Reproduce a set of clip art animals.
• Invite the children to manipulate the animals to solve the equation.
• Once children are able to do this and explain the process, then they are ready to move to the pictorial level.
• However, it is okay for children to use numerals and symbols to REPRESENT their answer AFTER solving conceptually.

Making Washington Words

Ever give your children a "big" word and invite them to make little words? What happens? I know in my class one child would understand, and the rest just copied whatever he wrote. I knew there had to be a better way. Here's what I did:

• Give the children the letters in the big word.
• Give them a list of words.
• Invite the children to try and make the words.
• Mark on the recording page if they can make the word or not make the word.

Making President Words

OR... give them the letters to make the big word. Invite them to make words in a word family.

• Find the "e" and "t".
• Then, invite them to place each letter in from of "et". Does it make a new word? If so, write it on the recording page.
• Do this with several word families.

These activities are from the Hooray for President's Day unit.