Patriotic Activities

With Election Day and Veterans Day this week we are doing a few different patriotic activities. We aren’t getting too political with it, just discussing some of the major symbols of the United States of America.

Red, White and Blue Tot Trays

Some of our trays this week are red, white, and blue. We are talking a lot about red, white, and blue being our national colors. These trays help the kids practice counting, sorting, color recognition, patterning, and fine motor skills.

We have a tray of red, white, and blue beads with pipe cleaners.

The kids have been sorting the beads by color and making different patterns. We clip a clothespin to the bottom of the pipe cleaner to keep the beads from falling off of the bottom. Of course, we had to make a couple of them into bracelets!

Another way we are using the beads is by sticking pipe cleaners into a foam block. Then the kids are sorting the beads by color and putting them on the matching color. This was the favorite today! After the pipe cleaners were full we counted one by one as they took each bead off, great one-to-one correspondence and fine motor practice.

Our other red, white, and blue tray is our pom pom roll, count, and transfer tray. The kids have used this in a variety of ways. Tinker likes to put the pom poms into the ice cube tray and take them back out…over and over again. Perfect! As she does this we name the colors or count.

The big kids roll the number cube and then count to transfer that many pom poms. Sometimes they use the clothespin to transfer, and other times they use their fingers. Either way they are practicing fine motor control.

As they transfer they will often sort or make a pattern along with the counting they are doing. Lots of learning going on in this simple activity!

Syllable Activities

In phonemic awareness, we are practicing syllables this week. After I say a word, the kids repeat after me. Then they clap to separate the parts (syllables) in the word. Sometimes we ho,  too. All of this is done orally without any written words shown.

As we get comfortable with the word list, we will also use our MegaBloks to practice this concept. I give the kids a stack of blocks that has the same number of blocks as the number of syllables in the word I am going to say. Then we will repeat the word and pull off a block for each syllable in the word. We use the MegaBloks because they are very easy to take apart and put back together, but any connecting blocks would work.

These are some of the words we are using this week, but I don’t say them in this order. The number of syllables is in parenthesis.

• Vote (1)
• Red (1)
• White (1)
• Blue (1)
• Romney (2)
• Obama (3)
• Election (3)
• President (3)
• Veteran (3)
• November (3)
• America (4)

Election Day Activities

On Election Day we will take a look at the election process by doing our own version of the Angry Birds Election from I Can Teach My Child. We will use our baby doll collection to see who gets elected in our house!

We will also color in this How the U.S. Voted freebie and track the winner of the election. The kids have been choosing to do one of our United States of America puzzles nonstop lately, so I think they will like coloring this one to go along with the election.

Living Montessori Now also has an excellent list of Montessori-inspired election activities.