President’s Day Activities for Preschool
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Books to Read

There are many different directions one could go when deciding on which President’s Day activities for preschool to use. One option is reading. Read some books about the most famous presidents that you want children to be familiar with, such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Try “Little George Washington Learns to Be Responsible” and “Little Abraham Lincoln Learns to Be Honest” by David Mead for simple stories about these two important presidents.

President Crafts

Make a craft to go along with the book you have read. For example, if you are focusing on George Washington, you can make a cherry tree to represent the one in the famous legend. Give each child a brown strip of construction paper and a green circle of construction paper, and show them how to glue them onto a third piece of paper in the shape of a tree. Then help them get into their smocks and finger paint red dots, or cherries, onto the tree.

If you have read them the book about Abraham Lincoln, you can help them make a hat just like Lincoln used to wear. Let them paint paper plates with black paint and allow the paint to dry completely. Cut a hole in the center of the plate that is large enough for their heads to stick through. Then show them how to roll a piece of black construction paper and tape the edges so that it makes the “stovepipe” portion of the hat. Tape the stovepipe to the base of the hat, and you are done! Kids will enjoy wearing their “Lincoln Hats” for all to see. You can also have students make their hats in different colors or decorate their hats with art supplies.

Writing Activities

Think that preschoolers can not write? Maybe not, but they can draft a letter anyway. Let students brainstorm ideas on one of the following two topics:

  1. If I Were President: If you were President of the United States, what would you do? Make sure children understand that presidents can not make laws, but that they can support laws and encourage Congress to pass them.
  2. Dear Mr. President: If you could write a letter to the President, what would you write about? Would you ask the president for something? Thank the president for something? You may be surprised with the answers that kids dream up.

Write down their ideas in a list on the board, and then read the ideas back to them. Then help them draft a letter by writing over their ideas in paragraph form. To make this easier, you can write each idea on sentence strips as they brainstorm, and then arrange the sentence strips in a logical order to write the paragraph.

Patriotic Activities

There are plenty of other patriotic activities you can try out with kids as President’s Day activities for preschool. For example, you could make these fun patriotic noisemakers, teach students about the Pledge of Allegiance, or discuss all of the positive aspects of living in America with your students.