Mini Preschool: Presidents' Day

This week was my turn to host preschool. The theme this month is supposed to be Valentines' Day, but I decided to switch and do Presidents' Day because my sub-theme was music/stories and I know the cutest song about Washington and Lincoln from back when I was in preschool. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I am amazed how much I remember from my own preschool experience, just proves the Bev's Preschool was the best ever, because I remember almost nothing from kindergarten. (Hooper people feel free to agree with me here.) Anyways, I started planning this preschool day, even before I planned the one I hosted clear back in December. That's how excited I was about it. :)

I've had several people ask me how I go about organizing a preschool day. So I thought I'd share my method, but everyone probably does it a little bit differently. First I brainstorm. I just write down everything I can think of that we can possibly do, or topics I want to cover, or any other ideas that I have. Then I look at my topic and sub-theme again and see which ideas fit in the best or how I could make a certain activity fall under the category I need to. For example, this time I wanted to do some letter tracing, so I thought we could either trace the names of some of the presidents, or words related to the presidents (like log cabin). But I also wanted to talk a little bit about money and being able to identify different coins, so I decided to group the two together and we ended up tracing the letters to the names of the different coins and then doing coin rubbings. Anyways, once I have a few of those thing put together, I try to put them in some kind of order, and I make myself a schedule to follow for the preschool day. My schedule this time looked like this:

Presidents Day Preschool Schedule

1. Introduce Presidents’ Day
      a. Talk about who’s the boss in our house (mom/dad), then make the point that the president is the boss of our country
2.Read story of George Washington (pg 110)
      a. Have children hold pictures
             i. George Washington
             ii. Cherry tree
             iii. Hatchet
             iv. George and his father
3. Teach George Washington Song
     a. Give children a three cornered hat to wear
     b. Give moms a copy of song words
4. Cherry tree craft
     a. Paint arms brown and stamp
     b. Use sponge to paint leaves
     c. Thumb print cherries
    d. Glue hatchet and young George to paper and let dry
5. Wiggly Activity-Riding horses
    a. This Is the Way the Ladies Ride
    b. Pass out paper w/words on it
6. Read story of Abraham Lincoln (pg 117)
     a. Have children hold pictures
          i. Abraham Lincoln
          ii. Log cabin
         iii. Books
         iv. United States
7. Teach Abraham Lincoln Song
     a. Give children a stove pipe hat
     b. Give moms a copy of song words
8. Log cabin craft
     a. Glue pretzel sticks to picture of log cabin
9. Penny throwing game
10. Teach about different coins
    a. Listen to the Silly Songs song about money
    b. Give each child a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter and have them match to picture
    c. Coin rubbings
    d. Trace letter of the names of coins

I am not always that organized, but when I am things go MUCH more smoothly for me. I feel like the last couple times I've done preschool, things have been a little awkward at the beginning, like I'll start talking and trying to introduce the lesson, but everyone is still getting settled down, and the kids don't seem to focus on me right away even though I'm talking. So this month I tried something new. I stole the idea from story time at the library. We sang a hello song.

Hello everybody and how are you?
How are you?
How are you?
Hello everybody and how are you?
How are you today?

Hello everybody and clap your hands
Clap your hands
Clap your hands
Hello everybody and clap your hands
Clap your hands today.

Hello everybody and stomp your feet
Stomp your feet
Stomp your feet
Hello everybody and stomp your feet
Stomp your feet today.

Hello everybody and roll your arms
Roll your arms
Roll your arms
Hello everybody and roll your arms
Roll your arms today.

And I thought it helped things go much more smoothly. All the kids had been to story time before, so they knew once we were done singing the song, that I would have something else for them. I think I'll use that tactic more often.

I talked a little bit about what Presidents' Day is and why we celebrate it. Then I introduced George Washington and we read a story about him cutting down the cherry tree as a young boy. I got the story out of the book What Your Preschooler Needs to Know: Read Alouds to Get Ready for Kindergarten by E. D. Hirsch Jr. and Linda Belivacqua. Aaron got me this book for Christmas and I absolutely love it. It is what is says it is...it's a book filled with things to read aloud to your kids. It has different categories like poems, songs, stories, history, science, and art. And in ever category the read alouds have been simplified so that a preschooler can understand them. The preface talks about why each of these areas are important, and other ways for parents to get involved in helping their kids learn, which I really like. (It also kind of disses on home school, which I obviously did not like or agree with, but I still think it's a fantastic resource, and plan on using it to home school.) While I was reading the story, I had the kids come up and hold different pictures that had to do with the story. I was hoping this would help keep their attention, since the idea of a president is a little hard for 2 and 3 year olds to grasp. I'd say the holding up of pictures worked well for some kids, and did nothing for others.

After our story, I talked a little bit about what kinds of clothes George Washington wore in his day. I had made each kid a three-cornered hat out of construction paper, and I passed those out.

Then we learned the first verse of a song called Washington and Lincoln, which comes from  the book My Picture Book of Songs by Alene Dalton, Myriel Ashton, and Erla Young. I should just buy this book, because I check it out of the library every time it's my turn to do preschool. It has great songs in it. A lot of the songs are ones that I learned when I was in preschool. Suzy was a huge help, she brought over her keyboard and played the song for us, so that the kids could hear the music. I think they really liked that part. And the moms were good sports for singing along. (I gave them a paper with the words on it, so I didn't have to sing solo.)

After singing the song a couple times, we went into the kitchen to do a George Washington craft. The moms helped out and we painted each kid's arm brown and stamped it onto a paper, to make a tree trunk. We had a time out to wash paint off of arms. Then we used sponges to sponge on some green leaves. Then using our thumbs we did red dots for cherries. Last we glued on a young George Washington and a hatchet, so we could remember than even when we do bad things we still have to tell the truth, because being honest is important. I helped Ivan a lot, but Linc did his pretty much all on his own. Here's how our cherry trees turned out:

At this point I figured the kids would need a wiggle activity. I was right. :) We came back into the living room and I told them that another thing about George Washington was that he loved to ride horses. We stood in a line and played the game This is the Way the Ladies Ride. I found about 12 different versions of this game online, but the one I liked best is sung to the tune of Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush.

This is the way the ladies ride
Jiggety jog, jiggety jog

This is the way the ladies ride
Jiggety jiggety jog

This is the way the gentlemen ride
Gallop and trot, gallop and trot
This is the way the gentlemen ride
Gallop and gallop and trot

This is the way the farmer rides
Hobbledy hoy, hobbledy hoy
This is the way the farmer rides
Hobbledy hobbledy hoy

This is the way the cowboy rides
Giddy up, giddy up
This is the way the cowboy rides
Giddy giddy up

For each verse we did a different action. For the ladies we skipped lightly, for the gentlemen we did high knees, for the farmers we did wide legs and went from side to side really slowly, and for the cowboy we trotted really fast. The kids had a good time with this, and I was very much out of breath by the time we were done.

By this time, I think the kids were starting to loose interest, it was a little bit hard to hold their attention. I sat them down and introduced them to Abraham Lincoln. We read a story about him from the same What Your Preschooler Needs to Know book. His story was a little bit harder to grasp I think, it skims slavery just barely and talks about Lincoln living in a log cabin and reading books by the fire, but I still think it was a little bit hard for the kids to connect with.

We learned the second verse of our song, but first I talked about what Abraham Lincoln wore in his day and passed out stove pipe hats for the kids to wear while we sang.

Then we headed back into the kitchen to make log cabins. I had printed a picture of a log cabin for each of the kids, and I gave them a handful of pretzel sticks to glue on to the paper to "build" their log cabins. Here are ours:

Then I showed the kids a penny and how Lincoln's face was on the penny because he was a great president. We played a penny toss game. Each kid got 5 pennies to try and toss into a bowl. But the game kind of turned into chaos. We couldn't convince the kids to stand back far enough from the bowl, or to take turns tossing their pennies. But they had a good time with it anyway, so oh well.

For our last thing, I wanted to talk about money. I had a song for the kids to listen to, but we were running out of time and attention span, so I skipped it. I passed out a paper that had a picture of each of the coins on it. We talked briefly about which president was on each coin. Then I gave each kid a quarter, dime, nickel, and penny and a pencil so they could do coin rubbings. My kids pretty much got left on their own for this activity, because I was busy passing out supplies. Thank you Stephanie for helping Ivan out. And I was impressed with how well Lincoln did all by himself. His rubbings actually turned out pretty good. The last thing on that paper was to trace the letters in the names of each coin, but I think the kids were pretty much done by then, so I don't know how many of them actually attempted it. I know Lincoln did. He sat at the table in the midst of all the chaos and traced his letters. The kid hates to color, but he sure does love to trace! Either way, I'm just glad he's getting in the practice with a pencil. He's getting pretty good at tracing too. This is his paper. I did not help him one iota.

I think if I were to do it over again, I would have just sent the last activity home. I really do think the kids had had enough at that point. But as a whole I thought they did a lot better than I expected at grasping the concept of Presidents' Day. I guess it's never to early to start teaching history.

(Sorry, my preschool posts are always so long when it's my turn. Probably because instead of just saying what happened, I like to tell the whole thought process and what went in to every little thing, as well as anylizing my childrens abilities and learning styles. Oh well.)