Teacher Idea Factory: WE HEART VETERANS - ACTIVITY IDEAS AND PLANS

Let's be honest with ourselves. November is jam-packed with turkeys, Thanksgiving, thankful thoughts, and end of the trimester assessments. In the past, I have crammed Veterans Day into an afternoon or slipped an activity in here or there. Well, after visiting the Normandy Coast and seeing the amazing poppy installation at the Tower of London just last month, I can't let this holiday slip by without paying tribute to our veterans. On that note, next Monday will be dedicated to celebrating those brave men and women who have served (and continue to serve) our country.

Here's a quick run down of our Monday schedule (11/10/14):

As we kick off the day, our centers will be veteran/soldier themed. Our aide will host a vocabulary introduction and work on veteran themed vocab flip books. The kids will write sentences containing the new vocabulary.

Monday's mommy helper will man the Camouflage Read the Room activity. We will be rolling with this template sight word style.

In my group, we will be reading the wonderful Veterans Day mini book from Teaching In High Heels. This reader is a PERFECT introduction for our babes.

After groups, the crew will write and design a card to send to a veteran. I will be dropping these of with our local vet group as soon as the babes finish them up (hopefully on Tuesday)! My guess is this one will leak over until the post-lunch period. That's a-okay with me as we want these to be beautiful :)

Math on Monday is going to be such fun. The queen of all that is amazing with arithmetic . . . Ms. Reagan Tunstall . . . has created the most delightful math ditties to go with Veterans Day. Have you seen her new pack? Uh, it will blow your mind (just like all of her products). We will be running her themed word problems as a whole class. Then, we will be transitioning into small groups so we can play the awesome games she has hiding in this collection - skip counting, place value work, and related numbers. ALL of these great hands-on activities hit what we have been covering these past few weeks . . . did you read our minds, Reagan?? Hehehehehe!!!! Thanks girl :)

After a little BRAIN BREAK (GoNoodle style), we will transition into our final project of the day. This one hit me on the drive home from school yesterday. Let's just say that a few of our sweeties have been struggling a little in the "kind" department these days. With this said, I wanted to parlay the military hero concept into a reflective write that gets kids thinking about ways that they could be heroes at school. I wanted buy-in with this one, so I came up with a neat craft to house the write . . . wearable dog tags. Yup. It's wearable work at it's finest! I cannot wait to do this with our babes.

Alright, so there you have it. Our Veterans Day studies in a nutshell. It's going to be a day jam packed with learning and celebration. If you are interested in any of the activities with the camo background, they are in my latest mini packet - We Heart Veterans. Most of the activities in this collection are editable. You can craft this packet to fit your exact needs. On a final note, I priced this low - $3. I am late to the party (as usual) and I wanted to make Veterans Day doable for more classrooms.

As I exit, I leave you with images from our European trip that inspired me to make this collection and dedicate a whole day to vets. I was so moved by all of the battle grounds along the Normandy Coast. I was in tears much of the time. Thank you veterans and soldiers . . . from the bottom of my heart.