Learning about the Presidents for Presidents Day

February 5, 2025 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

While Presidents Day is in February because of the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it’s really meant to be a holiday that represents all presidents, so it’s a great time for kids to learn about different presidents, especially those they might not have heard of or learned much about before.

Of course between the Internet and good reference books it’s easy to research all the presidents these days, but it can be a little harder to find activities related to lesser know presidents.

Kids Activity Zone has a free printable bundle with a worksheet for every president. There’s a cartoony drawing on them and space to fill in their dates of birth and death, when they served as president, what party they were in and some information about their early life and education as well as what they did as president.

By the way, the White House website has good brief presidential biographies if you don’t want kids to just search online. Or you can use the biographies at National Geographic Kids, but it doesn’t include all of the presidents.

I also like these Presidents Day pennants from The Little Ladybug Shop at Teachers Pay Teachers. This more than 100 page download includes pennant shaped pages for each president where kids can fill in their basic information, life events, achievements and quotes. There’s also a blank option where kids can write in and draw their own picture of the president they are studying.

There’s also a Presidents Day banner report printable from Tied 2 Teaching at Teachers Pay Teachers, either of which would be great for older elementary/middle school kids. This one includes fact sheets for each of the presidents as well as a three-part printable kids can fill in, color and assemble. This includes the president’s face, a section for fast facts and a portion for writing about their achievements, challenges and other facts. (The text says 45 presidents so I’m not sure it was updated to include Joe Biden.)

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Fine Motor Task Cards for Kids

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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