Labor Day for Kids

Kids who are already back in school will be relishing an extra-long weekend with the Labor Day holiday, but most kids probably don’t know what the holiday is really about. (Fun fact: my daughter was born on Labor Day weekend so I always say it’s to celebrate a different kind of labor.)

But Labor Day is actually a serious holiday meant to honor the struggles of previous generations of workers who fought to gain more humane working hours and conditions, to prevent child labor and to provide for the safety and health of workers in ways its easy to take for granted now.

Depending on the age of your kids, you can slip in some facts about Labor Day like these from Kids Konnect (which also has printable worksheets), or watch some of the Labor Day videos from History Channel. Did you know Labor Day actually started in Canada?

What Do We Do All Day? has a great list of books to read for Labor Day, and you can bring all the patriotic, red, white and blue crafts back for one last go if you want to give the kids something to do while the barbecue is warming up.

Do you teach your kids about Labor Day? I’d love to hear your ideas.

[Photo: from History of Labor Day video at History.com.]

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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