American Symbols

Part of the first grade standards for Hawaii state social studies is to learn about American Symbols! My teaching team puts together these adorable books that I want to show you and provide some resources for where you can put together your own!  I've included lots of pictures, lots of links to products and freebies that I use, and also a freebie I put together for you that you can download at the end of this post!


We start by singing a silly song I found on YouTube by KinderBlossoms.  We then do a simple foldable in our Science and Social Studies Books.


I use the organization idea from my gal Corinna at Surfin' Through Second to separate my notebooks.  You can download the song freebie here.


We then make US Symbols books that I prep and comb bind ahead of time.  We use a combo of pages from Lindsay at Teacher Bits and Bobs and craftivities.  Each day we introduce a new US symbol, write about it, and make a craft.  We start with the world's oceans and continents, then focus in on our state in the US, Hawaii.  I like to play a continents and oceans song from YouTube, too.  I can't find the one I usually play, but there are a lot of good ones if you search on the site.   


These are some of the crafts we've done in the past. 


However, I switched some of them up this year.  We made the eagle and Liberty Bell crafts from Mrs Ricca's freebie President's Day packet.



For the Statue of Liberty, I did a directed drawing.  I love this one from Art Projects for Kids and also this one that is just her head.  The kids' paintings turned out beautiful! The parents loved seeing this project at Open House!

Speaking of Lady Liberty, I like to throw in this fun experiment when we learn about her to find out why she is green if she is made out of copper.  The kids love it! I bought this pack and use the worksheets in our science and social studies journals from Kindergarten Boom Boom, and also these directions from Buggy and Buddy.  I printed this out and put it by our experiments during Open House.  You can download it here.

For the flag, I cut white rectangles as the background, smaller rectangles for blue, red stripes, and then glitter for the stars.  

For the Pledge of Allegiance, I use Lori's freebie, just shrunk down to fit on the page.

There are a couple pages we made ourselves.  That includes symbols for our state and school, the White House, the world, and an assessment.


We also did a Lady Liberty OCDE Project GLAD® Pictorial Input Chart.  I'm becoming an OCDE Project GLAD® trainer, so I try to practice the strategies any chance I get!  The kids were fascinated that you can walk inside the statue and see out from the crown! I also wrote a poem that I included in my freebie.  

Via Pinterest

You can download my freebie with a poem, interactive journal, crafts for the world, state symbols, and the White House, as well as an assessment for free on my Google Drive!

How do you teach the US Symbols? 



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