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One of my favorite kindergarten units for February is to focus on President’s Day! There are many important topics you can discuss with your students, like what a president does for the country and how a president is elected. These topics can be made more accessible for young kindergarteners through read-alouds paired with fun and engaging activities. In this post, I’m going to share with you my favorite President’s Day activities for kindergarten.
These hands-on activities are a great way to introduce topics like elections and presidents to young learners. Plus, students will be practicing important literacy, math, and fine motor skills as they complete these activities! You can use these activities to put together a cohesive President’s Day unit for your students this year.
I have always loved teaching students more about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They are so excited to learn more about these presidents, especially once they make the connection that they are on our money!
The first step in learning all about these presidents is to read non-fiction books together as a class. You use anchor charts to record what you learn from your reading. Then, your students can work on putting together their own books with facts about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I suggest completing these pages gradually over the course of a President’s Day unit.
Your students can assemble their own crafts to illustrate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Then they will identify the president by filling in the sentence frames on each page.
Then they can identify the coin and bill on which each president is pictured. Students always love this part of the book! They can practice spelling number words and money words as they fill in the sentence frames on these pages.
Students can then reference your anchor charts from earlier as they write and illustrate facts about each president. They can choose two of their favorite facts about each president to include on the page, then draw a picture for each fact.
Another fun page in the All About Abe and George book can be completed after reading “Abe Lincoln’s Hat” by Martha Brenner. Students love to show what Abraham Lincoln kept in his hat and then decide what they would keep in their hats if they had one.
Finally, students can practice making comparisons by writing about how Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were alike.
After learning about presidents using nonfiction text, it’s fun to switch gears and discuss presidents and elections using clever picture books! Students love reading “Duck for President” by Doreen Cronin and “Grace for President” by Kelli DiPucchio. After reading each story, students can write about why they think Duck and Grace would make good presidents. They can also illustrate their writing.
What better way to learn about elections than to have your own? Your students will love having their own classroom election to decide if Duck or Grace should be the president. First, students will fill out their own voter registration cards like the animals did in “Duck for President.” You can tell your class more about voter registration and how people can only vote for a president if they have registered. Students can fill in the blanks with their information and then draw a picture of themselves. If you have school pictures handy, you could also give students a photo of themselves to glue onto their cards.
Once each student has a registration card, it’s time to vote! They can fill out their ballot by choosing either Duck or Grace, then return it to the voting box. You can also give them an “I Voted” tag to color and place on their shirt.
When everyone has voted, it’s time to tally the votes and practice graphing at the same time! Students are always excited to watch the class graph change as each vote is counted.
After the class graph is complete, students can fill out their own graphing worksheet to practice graphing and summarizing data.
Finally, your students can write about who they voted for and why. They can also illustrate their writing by drawing Duck or Grace at the top of the paper. It’s fun to see the reasoning behind each student’s decision!
After learning about what presidents do and how elections work, students will be ready to think about how they might convince people to vote for them. They can consider different reasons why people people should vote for them to be president! You can have students write down their thoughts to go with a voting booth craftivity! The adorable final product looks great on a bulletin board! Students love to open the curtains of the voting booth to see the different reasons why their peers would make good presidents.
All of the resources pictured above (and more!) can be found in my printable President’s Day unit for kindergarten. It has everything you need to teach your students about George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the election process. Your students will be able to practice important math and literacy skills as they complete these fun President’s Day activities for kindergarten. This resource also includes a unit-at-a-glance PDF that provides a suggested sequence for a cohesive unit.
If you’d like to take a closer look at all of the activities included in this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
If you would like to find these President’s Day activities later, be sure to save this post! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these hands-on activities when you’re planning your President’s Day kindergarten unit. If you want to plan even more fun kindergarten units for February, you’ll definitely want to check out my Valentine’s Day unit for kindergarten!
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
