American Symbols Unit! My Fave :)

Teaching American symbols is always, hands down, my most favorite thing to teach. It's just so fun and makes my classroom look so pretty. It's also wonderful for teaching non-fiction writing. 

Day 1: we started talking about what a symbol means. And then I got them excited by telling them that tomorrow we'd learn about our first American symbol, the flag. I made spiral notebooks with some coloring pages and informational worksheets for each symbol. Today we found California on the U.S. Map and put a sticker on our city. 

Day 2: American Flag 

Day 3: the bald eagle 

Day 4: the red rose 

I also brought in real roses. The kids said they smelled so good just like cherries.

Day 5: Statue of Liberty 

If you've never done "directed drawing", you need to. Oh my goodness, my kids loved it and so did I. It was such a fun process. Step by step I show the kids a simple stroke to make with their pencil. Then they trace their lines with black crayon and color it all in with green. I was so impressed. 

Day 6: the White House & the President

We started by watching a video by Kid President (the cutest lil 3rd grader) meeting he president and touring the White House. We watched a video of the inside and a video of the outside. The kids were in love and ready to move in lol. 

Day 7: George Washington 

We did another directed drawing of George after watching a Brain Pop video and reading another scholastic magazine.

Day 8: Abraham Lincoln 

There is so many fun things for Lincoln. We read a scholastic magazine, watched a Brain Pop video, and then did another directed drawing. The kids are really doing well with this activity. 

They also wrote about what they would do if they were president. Some of their answers definitely made me laugh. This friend must've been impressed with the pool in the video tour!

Day 9: the Liberty Bell

The kids were fascinated by the bell! We watched some videos and read some books. We even experimented ringing a regular bell and a cracked bell to hear the difference. Afterwards, we made the bell and wrote a sentence to go along with it. 

Day 10: Mount Rushmore 

I didn't have a project for Mount Rushmore so instead we just took pics! Haha it was so much fun and I couldn't stop laughing. The kids favorite was Teddy Roosevelt, lol. I have no ide why, I think they loved his serious face.

Day 11: soldiers/military 

The kids seemed really interested in learning about the 5 branches of the military: navy, army, Air Force, coast guard, and marines. We watched a great YouTube video that summed up the differences of each one for kids to understand. We talked about how brave and amazing soldiers are and what they do for America. We made a soldier and then wrote on them. I gave them a handful of sentence prompts they could choose from, but ultimately told them to write whatever they wanted about soldiers. I looooooved reading them. 

Day 12: favorite symbol 

Today was our last day focusing on American symbols and the kids are really upset! I told them next week is California symbols week so that perked them back up. But the past 3 weeks have been so much fun. Today was our last day so with our 8th grade buddies, we wrote about what symbol was our favorite and then illustrated the cover of our symbols book. Then we will share them and take them

Home! :)