Learning about the Presidents for Presidents Day

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.)

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

Have you read?

Leave a Reply