AMERICA WEEK: PK 3

AMERICA UNIT FREE DOWNLOADABLE PDF 

Jessica's Week

It’s not that I don’t love and appreciate my country but boy was this week just kinda blah. Honestly, I think the biggest issue was, for me, an “America” theme just must be done in the summer accompanied by all the 4th of July hoopla. Doing it on “President’s Day” week….when Taegan has yet to comprehend what the point of a president (or any authority figure for that matter 😉) is was exhausting.

We got right to work on Monday playing with coins. She identified which president is on each one and sorted them into piles. We experimented with cleaning the pennies using vinegar and salt. We talked more in depth about some famous presidents with the ultimate sticker book I ordered off amazon. Then we read “Duck For President" and practiced acting presidential and “voting” for which traits make the best president. This role play was basically the only hit I had with my three year old. She loves to be the boss and has all the traits of a good president down pat.

After the official holiday I decided to throw in some other Americana lessons. It’s always been important to my husband that T learn the pledge of allegiance so we worked on that quite a bit. We also talked about the American flag and made a nice craft flag by counting and cutting out the correct number of stripes. I put the American symbols toob into a sensory bin to hunt for and Montessori match landmarks. Taegan enjoyed all of these activities more than the presidential ones but she still never seemed super excited about what we were learning until we took a long car trip late in the week. She must have pointed out over a dozen American, or as she call’s them daddy’s flag!! So if nothing else we know she knows what our flag looks like lol!
Each morning we switched our focus to American geography and played a little state memorization game I came up with. My mom saved a states map placemat from when I was a kid and I’ve long been thinking about a way to incorporate it into our lessons. I settled on placing a piece of cereal (which is a pretty rare treat in our household) on each of the states I want her to learn and making her point and say it’s name before she can eat the snack. We started with 3 or 4 that are easily recognizable bc we have family that live there and slowly worked our way up to about 10. I have little hints for each one; for example where do Mickey and Minnie live…can you guess? 😊 This way a yummy way to start the day with some learning.

My personal highlight of the week was when we created a lady liberty costume. I bought a foam visor from Michaels and T painted it rusty green. We wrapped her in a sheet and fashioned a torch from tissue paper. It was soooo cute!!! Even if she did only keep it on for five minutes. Three year old’s don’t make great statues but at least you can see our adorable little lady immortalized in photograph.

​ It wasn’t my favorite theme but I think we got some learning out of America week and I’d love to try it again at a more fitting time of year. 


Ana's Week

We spent just two days on our America/President’s Day unit, and I believe that amount of time was just right for a young preschooler. Because the term “president” is hard enough for a child who doesn’t even really understand what the United States of America are, I focused on making the lessons fun and really just learning the names of two of our presidents. Aria loved the crafts that we made and still remembers that Washington is the first President of the United States and Lincoln was another president. We did some of the crafts with daddy on Sunday, which Aria thought was so wonderful. Any time we can get dad involved is a great time!

I definitely advise keeping it simple during the President’s Day lessons. As much as we want our kids to be smart and challenged, sometimes it is good to accept that some concepts are just too difficult to learn at age three and really focus on learning basic terms and having fun. I also recommend spending a few days on the United States of America before diving into lessons about President’s Day, because teaching about what the United States is and a President all in one lesson is going to be overwhelming. Aria already knew what the United States is from our election unit, so we had a leg up on the week!

Aria’s favorite lessons were the matching game where we matched money to a president’s face because once she matched and counted the money, I allowed her to put it in her piggy bank. She also enjoyed making a log cabin out of pretzels and graham crackers, though admittedly, eating it was her favorite part! I count the unit successful because beyond the fact that Aria reached all of my unit objectives, I am just so elated that she knows two presidents already!

(Sorry about the lack of pictures! I don't know what happened, but I can't find any pictures from this unit on my phone! My bad.)