President's Day Fun

George Washington (Lansdowne portrait), First President (1789-1797)
photo © 2008 Cliff | more info (via: Wylio)

Monday is President's Day and here are some fun activities to consider including your lesson plans!

Arts & Crafts

  • Provide students with tracing paper and coins, inviting them to create coin rubbings with various graphic art tools (i.e. crayons, pencils, chalk, pastels, etc.).
  • Have students create "hands on" cherry tree prints - paint the underside of their forearm with brown craft paint and their palm/fingers green. Invite them to place a print on white construction paper, set aside to dry, then add fingerprint "cherries" on the tree with red craft paint.

Cross-Curricular Activities

Talk about what life would have been like for George Washington and later for Abraham Lincoln. Choose several comparisons that your students will be able to relate to (i.e. games, electricity, clothing, food, school, etc.). EDSITEment! provides a great lesson for this topic so be sure to check it out! At the end of the discussion, provide your students with supplies for making George Washington's wig or Abraham Lincoln's top hat. At Everything Preschool, you'll find directions for making a packing peanut wig, Bright Hub provides directions for a cotton ball wig, and Little Giraffes Teaching Ideas offers a great tutorial for making Lincoln's hat and beard.

With their wig or hat firmly in place, complete the following activities to get into the fun of President's Day:

  • Read several literature selections about the presidents/time period.
  • Pretend to live in the period - demonstrate a movement (i.e. pumping water, gathering berries, hunting for game, gardening, etc.) and have your students copy you.
  • Play several games from the time period. You can find great ideas at The Paul Revere House, the Colonial Williamsburg website, and even in the lesson plan from EDSITEment! we mentioned earlier.

Here are some great science and math ideas that can be adapted to your preschoolers skill level!

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