Fun President's Day Lessons for Your 3rd-5th Grade Class

Remember when learning about the presidents consisted mainly of boring rote memorization that you kept until test day then completely forgot about until the next teacher insisted you memorize presidential facts? This President's Day, spare your class that headache and make learning about the presidents something enjoyable. Here are three fun ways to teach the presidents to children in third through fifth grade without boring your students.

Presidential Dress Up: Have your students select a president to dress up as. While costumed, they should also each do an oral report, but not just a fact finding hunt. Challenge them a bit by requiring that they find at least one reason why the president they chose affects people today, either the child personally or society as a whole. If your girls are reluctant to dress up as men, you can ask them to report on important women in history, maybe with an emphasis on the roles of first ladies. After the reports, consider having a fun presidential snack party to reward the students for standing in front of the class and delivering reports. This will help the shy students feel better and give a positive association to a situation that could be scary to some.

Vote for President: Have each child pick a president and find as many facts about the president as there are children in the class. Encourage them to find the most interesting ones. Then, have two children go up front and say their first fact. The class should vote to decide which person's president they are most interested in hearing more about. Then the child who received the least votes should step down and join the class and another student will go up and challenge the winner. This will continue until everyone has had a turn and the last president standing will win the "election". This not only makes fact learning fun, but it provides a very simplistic example of voting democratically.

Write a Letter to Your Favorite President: Ask your class to write a letter to their favorite president. They should ask questions about things they've found interesting in their research and/or thank them for their contributions explaining why it affects them today. This exercise will help personify the facts and is also great practice for letter writing, grammar and spelling.

Learning about the president's needn't be dry. Adding a bit of fun to the classroom will not only provide entertainment, but will help cement the lesson in their minds far better than cramming and memorization alone. Get creative with the lesson planning this President's Day. You won't regret it!