Presidents and Patriotism

One of my favorite units in February is Presidents. We have so much fun learning about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and just our country in general.

One art project that gets them thinking about the whole idea is this....
We color and cut out the 2 monuments (after talking about them and looking at real pictures of them) then we put watered down tempura paint onto the paper where they use a straw to blow on it and make it look like fireworks. The original idea was to use black paper, but you just couldn't see the paint on it, so we switched it. I am not sure where the masters for the monuments came from.

One of my favorite lessons for this unit comes later... we use a variety of pictures to discuss symbols. We say again and again, "a symbol is something that stands for something else". We talk about traffic signs (a review from the beginning of the year). We talk about letters and numbers. Then I introduce some of our patriotic symbols. I have about 15 both national and California symbols.... for example, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, the bald eagle, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Redwood tree, etc. We look at each one and discuss what it is and whether it is a National symbol or a State symbol. On a different day, we brainstorm words that these things stand for... justice, freedom, protection, beauty, strength, honesty, etc. Then we hold up the symbols and say some sentences: "The California Poppy stands for beauty." "Abraham Lincoln stands for freedom." Then, each child chooses a symbol and draws it with a pencil. When the pencil drawing is done, they go over it with a Sharpie marker then watercolor paint it. On another day, we all choose a sentence and write it. This particular example says, "The bear stands for protection."