Celebrating Juneteenth with Kids

Juneteenth, also known as Liberation Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday that’s been acknowledged more in the past few years. It happens on June 19th, and it marks the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that the enslaved people of Texas had been freed.

Juneteenth was a celebration in Texas through the 1800s and began to spread through the South, often as a community gathering centering on food, in the 1920s and ’30s. The day became a federal holiday in 2021, and it is recognized as a holiday in every state.

While it’s a heavy holiday because it deals with the history of slavery and those enslaved people in Texas has legally been freed in 1863, it is also a celebration and marked by some as a second Independence Day.

We Are Teachers has a nice collection of books and videos to read and watch with kids about Juneteenth, which is a good place to start.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has a great PDF on teaching or talking about Juneteenth with kids, including a discussion on when kids are old enough to learn about slavery and why it’s important to talk about and celebrate Juneteenth today.

In the past I’ve collected some facts and worksheets about Juneteeth for kids to use, as well as some great printable games and more resources for learning about Juneteenth.

If your community has a celebration that’s another great way to help kids understand that Juneteenth is a celebration as well as a remembrance of a dark time in our nation’s history. Or if you want to focus on the food aspect, there are a lot of great ideas for Juneteenth menus, including this one from Divas Can Cook. Just make sure there’s something red on the table (like strawberry soda or red velvet cake) because red foods symbolize resilience and joy.

[Photo: National Museum of African American History and Culture.]

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Learning about Juneteenth

Bring on the fall leaves, pumpkins and apples as we help little ones learn to recognize letters and get ready for reading with these fall literacy activities.

Practice letter recognition by feeding the scarecrow straw with the letters of the alphabet with this printable activity from ABCs of Literacy. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters so you can practice with either or match them as you “feed” the scarecrow.

Match the letters on fall leaves with the letters on the worksheet to play leafy letter match from The Kindergarten Connection. Kids can color in the leaves they find or cover them with dot markers.

Or do the same thing with this free pumpkin color the alphabet activity using lowercase letters. It’s from The Kinder Life on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Work on sight word recognition with this pumpkin sight words printable activity from The Connet Connection on Teachers Pay Teachers. This free download lets kids practice their sight words while they hunt for a black cat.

Help kids learn to spell their names with this apple printable activity from Books and Giggles. Kids can find each of the letters in their name on apples, put them together to spell their name, then count the number of letters in their name.

Twisty Noodle has a fall words printable coloring page where kids can trace the letters for fall words: acorn, leaf, apple and pumpkin.

Little printable books are so fun for early readers to read and color. I See Fall is a free printable book from Fun a Day that includes six fall items: acorns, sunflowers, pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows and apples. You have the option of printing it will all the words on each page (I see pumpkins, for example) or with the word see missing so kids can practice writing it in on their own.

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