Happy Presidents' Day!

I've never celebrated the real meaning of Presidents' Day like I have this year.  Being in a school really makes it fun, especially with kids who have never HEARD of the greats, like Abe Lincoln and G. W. :)  We did some really fun activities last week:

Abraham Lincoln

 I traced my friend to create a somewhat lifelike Abraham Lincoln and had the kids come see how tall he really was and then put a sticky note where the top of their head came to on his body.  It's not like no one is taller than 6'4" but compared to my little munchkins, it's up there!

Log Cabin

I also taught them about the penny while teaching about Abraham Lincoln and the best activity we did, which I didn't even take a picture of, was to make his log cabin by gluing 6 popsicle sticks onto blue construction paper, gluing a triangle piece on top for the roof, a rectangle piece for the door, and a square piece for the window.  And INSIDE the window, they got to glue a penny, heads side up, so that it looked like Lincoln was in the log cabin, how cute is that?! I got the idea HERE. 

George Washington

I know that Washington chopping down his dad's cherry tree is supposedly a myth, but it's still a fun story to tell and the cherry trees they made were so great!  They traced their arm/fist with brown crayon and colored it for the trunk, then dipped their thumbs in green for leaves and pinkies in red for the cherries.  They loved it!

This was a two-part activity.  Obviously we did the Lincoln side when talking about Lincoln, making his beard and hair out of ripped pieces of black paper (fine motor skills!) and then two days later on the back of the SAME Lincoln head, they made George Washington, using cotton balls for his hair :)

FUN FACT (and confession): I taught my kids that George Washington had really bad teeth, which eventually fell out.  that part is true.  Then I told them that he had wooden teeth for most of his life but that is WRONG and I just found out today - his dentist actually made him false teeth out of IVORY from the TUSK of a HIPPOPOTAMUS!  So much cooler than wood.

Stars and Stripes

Friday was my last day teaching my preschoolers and my teacher had a substitute, so I went all out for teaching the flag/George Washington, hence the Friday Fun Day face paint (colored chalk dipped in water). 

The kids had a cow when they came back from computers and saw my face painted - sometimes it's really easy to get their attention ;)  It was so fun to teach the stars:  the stripes are in a pattern, each star represents a state - which was the perfect transition to talking about G.W. being the first president when there were only 13 "states" aka. colonies. 

Basically, Friday was SUCH a fun day teaching the kiddos all by myself and talking with them all about things they know (they know a lot!).  Did you know they can sing the Star Spangled Banner and say the Pledge of Allegiance all by themselves?  Sometimes their heartfelt singing makes me teary-eyed, they are so precious and I hope they never lose that enthusiasm. 

I'm going to miss them a LOT but I'm also ready to experience something new :)

p.s. We actually spent Presidents' Day shopping and going to some really cool waterfalls - more on that tomorrow!


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