Memorial Day
Happy Memorial Day! Today we honor all the brave men and women who have died serving our great country. The kids are all out of school. Warmer weather is finally here. Everyone loves this long weekend filled with grilled foods, family time, and outdoor play. I made a few printable activities to help the kids celebrate and observe this day. There is a free coloring page, patriotic cutouts you can use to create an easy sensory bin and kids’ necklace craft, as well as a skip counting flag for kids to get a jump start on some summer math fun. Hope you all enjoy!
Memorial Day makes me think of the last line from our national anthem… “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as this day is really about remembering all the brave souls who have made the ultimate sacrifice in order for us to enjoy our daily lives. This coloring page can also be used to teach kids states, capitals, and counting to 50. You can challenge older kids to learn about state trivia (what is each state bird or flower) or you can encourage kids to draw fun patterns using reds and blues and hang to decorate for today.
My nineteen month old really enjoys sensory play. I made the cutouts above for her and laminated them to put into her bin. I shortened one of our blue pool noodle horses, cut up another red pool noodle, and squished some white cupcake liners in between. The addition of a funnel, scooper, some red chopsticks, a handful of q-tips, and a bowl of red, white, and blue pom poms in varying sizes completed this very quick and easy sensory bin. She enjoyed trying to push the q-tips and different pom poms into the holes of the pool noodles and crinkling the cupcake wrappers. She had to use her chopstick to get the pom poms through the funnel. While she played, we talked about the various sizes, colors, and shapes as well as explored her first sight word (I) and the letters in our country’s initial. My preschooler enjoyed this as well and used the q-tips to trace over the letters.
We used the same cutouts to craft some patriotic necklaces. Just add some hole punches to the laminated cutouts. My kids love making necklaces. We have used everything from beads, to straws, cereal, and noodles. It is fun watching my younger ones concentrate so hard getting the string through the beads while my older kids like to come up with creative patterns. My preschooler also really enjoys cutting the straws into beads as the pieces tend to fly all over the place and to a three-year-old, that is very hilarious.
This file is best printed out onto cardstock and laminated for more durability. Take this outdoors and have the kids use it as a reference to draw some skip counting hopscotch with sidewalk chalk. Skip counting is a great way to help your kids do mental math quickly and will also help kids have an easier time learning their multiplication tables. You can have this printable blown up poster size at a Walmart or Walgreens (sometimes they have 1.99 poster deals) and display in your classroom or child’s study space to be used as a colorful study aid and reference chart. Another idea is to give your kids a bunch of circles and have them write and paste together skip counting caterpillars. Stick to red, white, and blue construction paper and you will have made patriotic bugs.
We also like to take time during this long weekend to visit the cemetery with the kids and observe the graves of those who served decorated with flags. The kids also visited their great-grandfather’s grave. He received a purple heart when he was injured in WW2. We brought fresh flowers for the kids to place on every grave that was bare. I was hoping to find some patriotic flower arrangements however found flowers of every other shade instead so armed with some white carnations and some food coloring, decided to teach the kids about capillary action. This is a great experiment to do with kids especially with the long weekend. You can cut the stems to various lengths and try different color dyes and have kids predict, observe, and record what will happen to the flowers. The kids were amazed to see how quickly our white carnations became blue (just 30 minutes) whereas it took much longer for them to turn red (overnight). The kids were also intrigued at how the flower petals soaked up dye faster and with greater intensity on the outside of each petal before moving inwards.
Your child may also be interested in:
Free Thank a Veteran Card and Gift Tags
More Free Skip Counting Worksheets
Lemonade Stand Sensory Bin and Dramatic Play
Free Multiplication Color By Number
I create more fun educational printable activities for kids here with the goal of helping to grow kids who love to learn.
If you use these printables in your home or classroom, I would love to know how your kids enjoyed them! Please use #sodangfun on social media, tag me @sodangfun on Instagram, or post to my Facebook page.
I hope you find something inspiring and fun that can help your child celebrate and observe Memorial Day!
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