President's Day.Patriotic

 I started the week by showing the students some skip counting puzzles I found on TpT.  I ran it like a power point, and I used these images to introduce the students to the presidents and some fun facts including: Obama is our president now (some still think Romney based on our "election" in the fall, kind of funny) the president works in the oval office, Mount Rushmore has four important presidents on it (**We had a guess that Justin Beiber was on Mount Rushmore and another guess that it was Obama's family),  and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are dead and they lived a very, very long time ago (but no, I was not a baby when they were president.... I AM 25!).  Kids say the darndest things, but based on conferences, they did come home with some of the facts....

We did a coin flip activity (Found on TpT) in which we flipped a penny, and noted if we saw Lincoln's face or the Lincoln Memorial (tales).  The graphed this data and then counted the times they saw each. 

Students then did a coin rubbing of the coins, brown for pennies, and gray for quarters.  


We read the book Presidents Day. We learned about the Presidential Seal, which is on the floor of the oval office, Mount Rushmore again, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt (and national parks), and Thomas Jefferson (and the declaration of independence).  I feel a lot went over their heads, but I am glad I could expose them to this history at this age.  
Students worked on following 2 step directions and patterning by doing the stripes on their flags (start with red on top and then pattern red, white, red, white).  


They then followed more directions: fill the box with glue and put the blue box in that one.

Finally, students counted and worked with 1:1 correspondance putting the stars on.  We worked on following directions of a row on top of 6, then 5, 6, 5, and so on.  My goal was to get all 50 on there.  The rows got further apart than intentionally thought, so there most likely isn't 50, but they did follow directions of 6 and 5 and get practice counting and following directions that far.

We played President's Day Bingo (©Ashley Hugheswww.theschoolsupplyaddict.blogspot.com)  This worked on listening skills, following directions, and working on listening to describing words.  Student did well with this and enjoyed playing!  I love using BINGO in my teaching because it gives me time to teach about little things that come up on the boards.  This gave us the opportunity to tell about the pictures and why they are on the board.  It helped make some of the connections.  Some students got to play twice and it was cool to say, the Lincoln Memorial, and they remember what that is the second time around!

We read the Scholastic book: My Teacher For President and discussed all it would take to make a good president.  We made a list on the board, sounding out the initial sounds of the words.