Learning about Flag Day for Kids

Flag Day is sort of a weird holiday, but it celebrates the adoption of the official American flag back on June 14, 1777. Of course the flag has changed a lot through the years, because although there have always been 13 stripes to honor the original 13 colonies, the number of stars has changed as the number of states changed.

You can learn more about Flag Day in this Flag Day activities post, and make sure you check out the Flag Day unit study and printable flip book as well.

Flag Day is a great time to learn a little bit about the history of the flag and explore (virtually or otherwise) the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia.

Now’s the time to pull out all your red, white and blue craft supplies and make flags and other projects, which are a great way to decorate in the summer, at least through the Fourth of July but really straight on through Labor Day.

I love this button flag craft from Glued to My Crafts. If you don’t already have a ton of red, white and blue buttons in your stash you can probably find them at the dollar store, or use beads, pompoms, or a collection of patriotically colored stuff to make a similar design.

Kids can practice their fine motor skills by filling in the flag printables from 3 Dinosaurs with dot markers, using a cotton ball or cotton swab dabbed in the appropriate color, or even just coloring in the dots with regular markers or crayons.

And you can learn more fun facts about the American flag with this cute flag cootie catcher quiz from Red Ted Art. When you fold it up the outside quadrants make an American flag, and inside you’ll find some questions about the flag such as when it was last updated or what the original flag was called.

Printable Flag Day Flip Book

Easy American Flag Craft

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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