Bastille Day for Kids

When I was writing about France the other day, it occurred to me that Bastille Day was also coming up (July 14, to be precise), and I wasn’t sure that I had written about it before. On further digging I realized I had, but it’s been a few years, so let’s take a look at some more ideas for celebrating this pivotal day in French history. Of course anything in the post on France would be great to do as well.

First, if you want to start with a kid-friendly explanation of Bastille Day, get the basics from Britannica Kids.

Learn more about the French Revolution and play the Storming the Bastille game from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool +. It looks a little like Chutes (or Snakes) and Ladders to me, but I think you might start over instead of just going back when you hit a guillotine space. She also has a France unit study that includes a printable lapbook and making pain au’ chocolat.

The Princess and the Frog made a wafer cookie Eiffel Tower (which they originally found on our Edible Crafts site; love a full circle moment!). When I went looking for that I also saw Eiffel towers made of pretzels and gingerbread, so get creative with your building challenges.

Make a fun French flag collage with this tutorial from Sparkle Living Blog (via Real Creative Organized). Search for French clip art or royalty free photos online to add to your artwork. And if you’re looking for more France themed crafts, check out this collection from Artsy Craftsy Mom. My favorite is the little printable city, which came from Handmade Charlotte, but there are lots of cute craft ideas here for Bastille Day or an day.

Grab some Bastille Day coloring pages from Plantz Matter, which also has a little French lesson if you want to learn some basics. Coloring Pages for Kids also has some good options for Bastille Day coloring.

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

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