A Lil' Bit of President's Day with some Valentine's on the Side

So the past week has been CRAZY with weather - snow and ice...mainly ICE.

 Last week was one of those weeks that you just survive. 

We were out on Monday for President's Day, out on Tuesday for weather (ice), school on Wednesday, delayed start (ice) AND in-house professional development on Thursday, and early dismissal (ice with a TINY bit of snow) on Friday.

Needless to say, all of the fun activities that I had planned for President's Day didn't happen. :(

We did, however, find the time on Wednesday to read the book Duck for President and talk about what we would do if we were President. (I intended to copy all of their ideas down onto a cute anchor chart to display, but time was not on my side!) Time did allow for a little flag craft and discussion!

We first examined the flag in our classroom and counted the stripes and stars.

Then, we made our own!

We added a little writing activity (of course!) to our flag and then displayed them in the hallway.

(I think he has the right idea!) 

So that is all that we accomplished for President's Day. 

Before I go, let me share some of our Valentine's Day boxes. I got the idea from Simply Kinder! You can check it out {here}. 

I have to say I was VERY surprised at how well these turned out! This was the first year that I have done anything like this. We usually just decorate white paper bags and call it a day. :)

All of them were WONDERFUL! You can tell that a lot of thought and time went into making them.

 Here are a few of my favorites:

I will DEFINITELY be doing this again! Thanks Jennifer from Simply Kinder!

One more thing....

can't leave out our BEE-utiful bees from Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies!

I hope everyone has a Happy Monday! I will be enjoying yet another Snow (ICE) Day!

President's Day and a FREEBIE!

This past week we spent three exciting days talking about President's Day. George Washington was the focus for Day 1. Check out some of the activities that we did!

 

 

We made hats to look like George Washington!

 

 

We made and read Fran Kramer's "Our First President" book. (You can pick up a copy for yourself here.) Then, we did a guided art drawing of Mr. Washington. :) This is a picture of one of my kinders drawings.

 

We read books and talked about George Washington all day! At the end of the day, we made a facts chart of everything we learned about George Washington. I sat at the computer and typed up what the kids had to say and then printed the facts out and added them to our chart.

 

 

Day 2 was all about Abraham Lincoln. I had copier issues with running off the book on Abe for everyone, but we still read the one copy that I did have and did our guided art drawing on a separate page.

 

I thought that they turned out SUPER cute!

 

 

 

Of course, we HAD to make hats! ;)

 

Again, we read books all day and then made a facts chart at the end.

 

 

Day 3 was our big wrap-up!

 

 

We filled in a Venn Diagram with facts about both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I wrote in the facts on a large anchor chart and my kinders had the facts that they had to glue into the correct spot on the diagram. The student version was part of Erica Bohrer's President's Day Printables Pack. I was happily surprised at the information that my kinders recalled. :)

 

 

We made our own Washingtons and Lincolns. I had my kinders tell me which president was their favorite BEFORE I told them what we were doing. Sometimes they tend to base their decisions on what their friends are doing and what the looks like. :)

 

"He was the first president."

 

 



 

"He stopped slavery."

The last thing that we did was write about why we the president we chose was our favorite. The kids really seemed to enjoy talking about the presidents and doing all our activities.

 

I made the Lincoln/Washington writing page a FREEBIE in my TPT store. You can pick you a copy to use next year here. All I ask is that you leave me some feedback and if you like what you see, please consider following my store. :)

 

 

Hope you enjoyed seeing what we did for President's Day! What are some of the things that you do in your classroom?