Which Is Your Favorite American Symbol?

That's What I Asked My Students...

After we finished our unit on American symbols I asked my kindergarten and transitional kindergarten students that question. Then, we wrote about it on flag paper!
You can easily create your own flag writing template (see below) or you can 
  CLICK HERE or on any image to grab this flag writing template.

Everyone expressed their opinion about which national symbol was their favorite. 

Opinion Writing:

We reviewed photographs of American symbols.

Illustrating where the stars would normally go.

Kindergarten students had to tell me which symbol was their favorite and why. This was one of the opinion pieces we wrote. They wrote the words "I like" and they copied the name of their favorite national symbol from a sample I printed on lined paper. (My TK kids got to copy the entire sentence.)

Copying from their dictation and my printing.

The bald eagle was a favorite for many of the boys.

This is how it works:

In a small group setting, I asked each student to draw their favorite national symbol with a pencil in the rectangle. While they completed their illustration with crayons, I asked each child to tell me which symbol they chose and why.  

I wrote their dictation on lined paper, and they copied it on our special flag writing template.
We were sure to add blue background to the illustrations and red stripes between the lines on writing so the pages look like American flags. We used peeled and broken blue and red crayons for this. They got to draw and use crayons in a different way!

These are the T.K. papers before we mounted them on construction paper.
Kindergarten students added an additional sentence telling why they liked that symbol.

Opinion Discussion:

My Transitional Kindergarten kids also told me which American symbol was their favorite, they also wrote "I like" and copied the name of their favorite symbol.  Then, we discussed why each student liked the symbol they chose, but we didn't write why.  

The Statue of Liberty

The Liberty Bell

Mount Rushmore

The White House

The bald eagle

The Lincoln Memorial

The Statue of Liberty

Here are some of the kindergarten samples:

The Washington Monument

The Capitol

Time to Display Our Work:

After we mounted each flag template to a piece of 9"X12" red, white, and blue construction paper, we put them up on our magnetic board with magnets.  They look so cute!  My favorite illustration is Mount Rushmore (above).

We have to use magnets to hold the work up on the magnetic white board.

Click the image to get this template.

Perfect For 4th of July, Labor Day, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or a unit on National Symbols:

I usually do my National Symbol unit during February, but this is also a great project to do for any of the holidays listed above.

You can easily create your own flag template by creating a rectangle and then add a lined font to the rest of the page. 
Or you can find my American Flag Writing Template (which includes two sizes, one for TK or K and one for 1st grade) by clicking Here. 

Let me know how your kids liked it.  :)

See you all tomorrow.

Palma :)