Teaching your students about Presidents Day is a great way to incorporate some social studies standards into your lesson plans in February. But how can you teach about American presidents in an age-appropriate way? Follow along with our week-long unit as I show you how I taught my students all about President's Day.
President's Day Activities
Day 1 – An Introduction To President's Day
Before we get started, it's important to find out what your students already know about the holiday of President's Day. We use this KWL chart to write what we already know and what we want to learn.
We begin this unit with the history of Presidents' Day and why we celebrate it as a national holiday. Sometimes this holiday can be hard for young children to understand. Using a great read-aloud like, Presidents' Day by Anne Rockwell, is a good way to get started.
The book tells about the holiday in a kid-friendly way and includes lots of fun facts that students find interesting. We learn that President's Day is celebrated on the third Monday in February and is a federal holiday.
Throughout our unit, we make this interactive craft book that includes simple facts about Presidents Day. Students make a craft on each page of the book. We complete the first page of our book by making an American flag craft.
Day 2 – Why Do We Celebrate President's Day?
On the second day of our President's Day unit, we talk about why we celebrate the holiday. We read some non-fiction Google slides that teach us a little about the president of the United States and some interesting facts about the job. It explains all about why we honor our presidents on this day.
We also read a mini printable book about why we celebrate President's Day and we make the second page in our interactive craft book. On this page we make the February calendar to show that we celebrate Presidents Day during this month.
Day 3 – Learning About Our First President
On the third day of our President's Day unit, we begin to dive deeper and begin to learn about important presidents. On day three, we learn about our first president George Washington. We read A Picture Book Of George Washington and watch this video on YouTube.
We learn a little about colonial America, the tale about how George Washington cut down a cherry tree in Mount Vernon and we learn that George Washington's birthday is February 22. On this day we make the third page of our interactive book that includes a George Washington craft.
Day 4 – Learning About Abraham Lincoln
Next in our Presidents Day activities, it's time to learn about one of the most famous former presidents, Abe Lincoln. We read Abe Lincoln's Hat, a cute book that talks about how Abe kept his important papers inside of his stovepipe hat. Another favorite is Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers. In this book, a little girl writes a letter to the future president and tells him he should grow some whiskers.
We also watched this free video about Abraham Lincoln on YouTube. We learned that he lived in a log cabin growing up and we made our own log cabin with pretzel sticks. This is always one of my favorite president's day activities because it's such a cute craft. We finished up by making the 4th page of our interactive book with a craft of Abraham Lincoln.
Day 5 – The White House
On the 5th day of our President's Day unit, it was time to tie it all together with a lesson about the White House. We read the story Woodrow The White House Mouse which is a great book that shows the white house from the perspective of a little mouse. We also took a virtual field trip of the white house.
We learned about the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and some of our other U.S. presidents. We learned that Barack Obama was our first black president and that we have never had a female president – yet! On this day we made the final page of our interactive book with a craft of the White House.
On day 5 we wrote down some of the facts that we learned during our presidents' day activities. We used these graphic organizers to help us out and the students took a simple assessment about President's Day
Day 6 – President's Day Writing Activities
To complete our week of presidents day activities, we wrote a report about all the things we learned about this holiday. The students used their graphic organizers and the mini book to help them recall information and they made this President's Day flip book. It was a great activity and the perfect way to help younger students write about all they had learned.
If you're ready to teach your kindergarten, first or second grade students about President's Day in a fun way you can grab all these hands-on activities here. This resource includes google slides, writing templates, no prep worksheets, crafts, a flipbook, and the interactive craft book.
Looking for more February activities? Take a look at this post:
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