Are you looking for a hands-on approach to teaching the United States Constitution to 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade students? This lapbook is an interactive way to study the US Constitution on Constitution Day, during Celebrate Freedom Week, or anytime during the school year. After completing this Constitution Day activity, your students will have a reference guide they can refer to throughout the year. Designed for Elementary Students This lapbook activity was designed for elementary students. The purpose is to provide a basic understanding of the Constitution. An attempt has been made to simplify parts of the Constitution for students in grades 3 - 5. If you are wanting to do an in-depth study of the US Constitution then this activity may not meet your needs. Lapbook activities: Parts of the Constitution pockets - Create pockets for the Preamble, Articles, and Amendments. Place description cards into the correct pocket. Preamble flaps - Rewrite phrases of the Preamble in easy-to-understand language. Articles tabs - Write the purpose of each article on the appropriate tab. Bill of Rights and Amendments reference sheets - Discuss the importance of the listed amendments. What's Included: instructions (with pictures) for constructing the lapbook 6 pages of printables for the lapbook a cheat sheet for the teacher - Articles of the Constitution Teacher Tips When using this lapbook with younger students, I taught the US Constitution as we completed the lapbook together. Older students can use this resource for taking notes while researching the Constitution on their own. Save money by creating this lapbook on large construction paper rather than using file folders. It is so easy to make this activity more patriotic looking by using blue or red construction paper and your students will love the bright colors. Bundle and Save This resource is included in Constitution Bundle and includes worksheets to supplement the lapbook. This resource was created to support the following social studies TEKS: 3.10A - identify the purposes of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights 4.15C - identify the intent, meaning, and importance of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (Celebrate Freedom Week) 5.15B - explain the purposes of the U.S. Constitution as identified in the Preamble; 5.16A - identify and explain the basic functions of the three branches of government; What teachers are saying… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “This was a great way to touch on the constitution without it being too difficult. I'm so glad it came with photo instructions! Very appropriate for my 3rd grader. Would also work well for older students.” - Success Printable ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “This was a great activity for my 4th and 5th grade class. Most of my student's parents are not from this country so it was a nice break down of the constitution. I absolutely loved this activity and more importantly they enjoyed it.” - Allison F. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I cannot say enough good things about this product! It was fun to create my own and then to walk students through it. They enjoyed learning about each part and then using it as a resource for formative quizzes and games. When it came time for the final assessment, most of my students exceeded expectations; all of them felt proud of how well they had done with this material! Thank you :D” - Robin C. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Yes, yes and YES!! I loved this lapbook and my kids did too. We used it during our constitution unit at the beginning of the year and they really enjoyed putting it together. It was easy to use and fun!” - Katherine M. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Outstanding: Thorough and engaging, SO easy to teach with this lapbook as the foundation. My kids used it as a study guide as well.” - Laura A. Are you looking for more Constitution Day activities? You may also like... Preamble Match (FREEBIE!) Constitution: Supplemental Worksheets and Activities Want to save money? ✔️ Don't forget that leaving feedback earns you points toward FREE TpT purchases! ✔️ Follow me and be notified when new products are uploaded. New products are 50% off for the first 24 hours. Copyright © Hooty’s Homeroom All rights reserved by author. Permission for single classroom use only.
1-2-3 Come Do Some Constitution Day Activities With Me With a federal mandate that any schools accepting federal funds, need to do some educational activity associated with the Constitution, on September 17th, I wanted to think up something that my Y5’s could easily understand. With everything else that teachers have to cover, I also wanted what we did to be something simple and especially relevant to them. This packet does exactly that, because I've tied it into classroom management: jobs of students and teachers, as well as the rules and regulations they must follow. These activities not only tie in with the Constitution, they are quick and easy to implement. Children can wrap their heads around these Constitutional comparisons and the result will be a more caring classroom climate, with less inappropriate behavior. The Constitution is a document that serves as the foundation of American government. To help explain this to students, make a document of jobs as well as rules for your classroom and have all of the children sign it. The Constitution is broken up into 3 branches. (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial) They all have specific jobs. Like wise, teachers and students have jobs. First, discuss and make a list of all the jobs and responsibilities of a good student. Then make up a list of jobs (responsibilities) for teachers. I’ve included headers for you to put up on your board, so that you can brainstorm with your students and write things under the appropriate heading. Children’s discussion will often involve what they think the qualities of a good student and good teacher are. I’m sure some of their ideas will make you smile. ( “Teachers need to smell nice.” ) Write students’ ideas on the board. I’ve included a completed list of things we thought of to help you, as well as blank templates to fill in your own. I’d enjoy seeing what your kiddos come up with. You can e-mail me at: [email protected] Hang up your lists on a bulletin board. There’s also a poster that you can put in the middle of your board, after all of your students have signed it. Next, discuss your rules. Because students have been in school for several weeks, you’ve hopefully have already established a list of rules with them. If you don't have a set of rules posted, click on the link for my simple rules poster. Review the rules and make a list of them on the board. (Tie this in with the Constitution, as our country also has rules, which are laws that people must follow.) Discuss how things are going . Is everyone following the rules? Are they good rules; fair rules; necessary? Do you need to change, modify, or add any rules? (Tie this in with the Constitution by briefly explaining the amendments to the Constitution.) I've included a writing prompt page where students can jot down 3 reasons why doing their job and following rules is important. What are the consequences of not following the rules? What do they think would happen if there were no rules to follow and everyone adopted an “anything goes” attitude? (Briefly discuss the correlation of this to the Constitution’s checks, balances and punishment for breaking laws.) An easy way to make your classroom constitution is to make a social contract. Head your poster: “We the (kindergarten) students of (Orchard Trails Elementary) promise to . . .” and then list what students feel are important promises (rules, jobs and responsibilities). Have each child sign the poster. (Remember to have new students sign it too.) This is now a working document (like the Constitution). Discuss how signing something is a big deal. This is binding. Even young children understand the importance of a promise and following through. (“But you promised . . .) If the class as a whole, or an individual student, is not keeping their promises per the terms of your social contract, refer to the poster and ask: “Did you promise to follow the rules, be a good listener, be kind to one another? etc.” (Obviously they did.) After thy take responsibility for their actions then ask: “What would have been a better choice? What should happen now?” Click on the link to view/download the Constitution Day Jobs & Rules Packet. I found a cute social contract over at Corner Character blog spot. I like how she wrote each promise in a different color marker and then had students add their painted handprint to the side of the chart, adding their names when the paint dried. I designed my own social contract, tracing my students' hands on a variety of colors of construction paper. I glued our "promise poster" to the center of a piece of tag board, then "framed" it with the colorful prints. For more accountability, have children sign their own names, which makes them feel important & more accountable. For added pizzazz, when school pictures come back, copy, cut & glue one to each child's hand. Our social contract has been so successful, that I decided to share it in a "School Rules Classroom Management" packet. Click on the link to check it out. Follow up these activities by reading “We the Kids” by David Catrow. He makes understanding the Preamble to the Constitution accessible to children in a fun and humorous way. A glossary of terms and a foreword by the artist are also included. Since the Preamble is one of the most famous and familiar parts of the Constitution, I’ve included several trace and write worksheets in the packet. I find that a short video is often the best way to review and get more information into my students’ minds. A nice way to end your day is to choose a short video from this American history website. The first one is only 4 minutes, another on the Founding Fathers is 3 minutes and a final one entitled America Gets A Constitution is 4 minutes. They are easy for little ones to understand and include some good background information. Thanks for visiting. Time to go watch the Detroit Lions hopefully win a football game! "If you want to know where your heart is, go to where your mind goes when it wanders." -Unknown
I am all done with parent conferences and it feels great! I had the most terrific year and I’m so happy to share my students’ progress with their parents. During parent conference time, I always love to have lots of student work to display. I absolutely love to incorporate student pictures into student work. This ... Read More about Silhouette Autobiographies and Read Across America
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Wow, double “free” in my post title tonight!! First of all, I am SUPER excited because I uploaded my first item EVER to TPT tonight! Wooo hoo! I had been wanting to make a desk fairy note forever, and then I found these adorable St. Patty’s Day monster graphics by the amazing KPM Doodles and […]
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Schedule Cards include 2 sets of chalkboard schedule cards.. One set includes a pdf version, simply print, laminate, cut, and display! The other sets is editable. Since the file is editable, you can choose the font, font size, and font color that suits you best! Each Schedule Cards set includes: 130 schedule cards in total: Alphabet, art, assembly, ABC centers, arrival, assessment, birthday, big book, brain break, breakfast, buddy readers, brainstorming, cooking, craft, calendar, clean up, centers, circle time, computers, comprehension, close reading, daily five, dear, dismissal, daily math, dramatic play, estimation station, outside, experiment, field trip, fluency, free choice, free play, fun Friday, ELA, grammar, guest speaker, guided reading, gym, handwriting, health, small group, ipads, independent reading, introduce poem, journals, language arts, letter of the week, library, listening centers, literacy stations, lunch, math centers, math stations, math facts, math, movement, modeled writing, math rotations, math tubs, morning work, morning meeting, morning message, music, morning announcements, news, opening, outdoor play, poetry, pack up, PE, phonics, phonics centers, phonemic awareness, pocket chart, quiet time, read aloud, read to self, reward, reading group, read to someone, reader's theatre, reader's workshop, reading centers, recess, rest time, restroom, sensory, science, snack, science lab, shared reading, show and tell, sight words, silent reading, smart board, social studies, special visitor, story time, specials, spelling, STEM, surprise activity, special event, song, star of the week, star student, social skills, technology, testing, theme centers, word work, writer's workshop, write the room, writing, writing journals, wash up, religion, church, guidance. Are you looking for matching CLASSROOM DECOR? SCHEDULE CARDS CENTER SIGNS CLASSROOM JOBS HALL PASSES Looking for more BACK TO SCHOOL resources? DAVID Goes to School Activity Kissing Hand Craft All About Me Booklet Color Words Flip Book Calendar Binder Days of the Week Flip Book Book Bin Labels Supply Labels Classroom Rules
Here we are again - another month of AMAZING bloggers getting together to share some Bright Ideas. This time I'd like to share some ideas for those wiggly, bouncy, chatty, energetic, wonderful, kinesthetic learners. We all know 'em. We all have 'em. I think kinesthetic learners would pretty much describe almost every child in my class in 1st grade. Maybe it's the age, or maybe it's just my group of lovelies this year - but either way, I think all primary teachers can agree that it pays to have some strategies in your back pocket to break out when you see the wiggles start kicking in. Not to mention that most children learn best by doing. All of the ideas I'm going to share are ones I use in my classroom. I'm not claiming to have created these ideas, and I'm sure many teachers use the same ones, but I just wanted to share what I do. I hope you will see something that inspires you and you can try out in your own classroom. I named these ideas just to help explain, but if there is another name for them that maybe I don't know about or if there is an original creator, please feel free to let me know. I will always give credit where credit is due. So let's start with some ELA ideas: Whole Body Spelling is using your whole body to form letters to spell a word. You could do this with sight words or other spelling words. You can do it in the classroom, but my students love going outside to do this. We even go out in the winter and do this in the snow. Write in the air is just a quick way to practice spelling. We use our fingers in the air as if we are writing and spell words out loud together. This is a hard one to capture in a picture, but here is my attempt. Maybe you can tell that they are spelling the word again. :) Listen and Jump is something we do when reviewing sight words, rhyming words, or vocabulary words. In this picture all the kids have sight words and when I say a word that they have, they jump up in the air. They LOVE this one! Sometimes I will give them other words and say if your word rhymes with "cat" then jump up or if your word starts with a "b" sound jump up. This is also fun because a couple kids might jump up at the same time. Again - simple, but gets 'em moving. Lifesize Making Words - We use letter cards to spell words. As we stretch out the sounds the kids will either stand up or hold up their letter. Sometimes we have vowel teams and those kids link up their arms and say their sound together or we put a Super E at the end of the word and have him/her flip the vowel sound. The person holding the vowel turns around in a circle and says the long vowel sound instead. Acting out phonics is something that really helps my lower readers. They seem to remember things like flipping the vowel and linking arms and so on. Great visual for the whole class. Finally, and probably our MOST favorite, is a variation of the game Hullabaloo. This is such a cute game and my 3 and 5 year old girls really love playing this at home. In the actual game there are rubber mats that have pictures and words with things like animals, food, instruments, etc. You spread these out on the floor randomly. Then you turn on the "announcer". The announcer says things like "Slither over to a yellow mat" or "Hop over to a food". The kids move around and find the mats he's talking about. Then he will say something like, "If you are standing on the elephant you win - take a bow." It's super cute! So I decided to make this into a classroom game to practice word families and as we learn new spelling patterns. I use these pack of foam shapes that I got from the Dollar Tree. Then I write words on them using a sharpie. Right now we are working on long vowels so the pack of words I'm using has CVCe words, vowel teams, and also includes blends and digraphs. But in the beginning of the year I just use CVC words and slowly add in blends. We spread out the words on the floor and I will give directions like, "Tiptoe over to a word that rhymes with feet" or "Crawl over to a word that has a long e sound." We just stand next to the word instead of on them and then I have them read the words they chose. I play this with small groups of children so it is more manageable and because I don't have a ton of room, but it could be played as a class too. In the actual game kids can share mats, so sometimes we do that too. I also use these same cards at our reading table with fun fly swatter to swat the words if we don't have time to spread them all out on the floor. This is also a class favorite and super quick to set up when I don't have the time for the full thing. Now for some kinesthetic ideas to use in math: First up is skip counting. We use numeral cards that I quickly printed on the computer and laminated and each child has a number. We sit in a line or a circle. If we are counting by 2s for example, we will count around the circle and whisper the odd numbers and then shout (not too loud) the even numbers while those children stand up. Then we switch it up and count by other numbers. If we're counting by 3s, we would whisper 1,2 and shout 3, whisper 4,5, and shout 6, and so on. For Greater than/Less than we use the same numeral cards. We make numbers between 0 and 120 (first grade common core standards). Then I have a student stand in the middle and hold their arms like the sign. We practice reading it together. For example: 57 is greater than 46. We will also make numbers and put them in order from least to greatest or vice versa. Sometimes we turn the numeral cards into necklaces using sheet protectors and string and they don't have to hold up the numbers. This next one is something I am planning on getting when I have the money, but wanted to share it with you. In my classroom I have made a Lifesize Tens Frame out of a dollar store plastic tablecloth and washi tape for the lines (sorry no picture). We have kids stand in the tens frame to practice counting, adding, and subtracting using our bodies. But I also just found online this giant 120 chart and blow up dice that I think I will HAVE to get. I also saw another one that was even bigger where the kids move around on it. How fun! Finally is my version of Math Hullabaloo. This is the same idea as the reading version, only using numbers. Again, I write a bunch of numbers between 0 and 120 on the foam shapes using sharpie. Then we spread them all out. I give clues such as, "Dance over to a number with 6 tens" or "Slide over to a number greater than 30." Super fun! Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out my Bright Ideas for Kinesthetic Learners. If you enjoyed these ideas, please consider following my blog on Bloglovin' over on the side or following me on Facebook or Instagram.
I decided to take on my own challenge of incorporating a STEM activity every day for a week. It turned out to be a huge success where both my students and I had a blast. Here were the various …
