George Washington's Teeth

In the kindergarten class that I've been student teaching in, we've been thinking a lot lately about the presidents since Monday was Presidents' Day. We started off by just asking ourselves, "What is a president? What does a president do? What are his responsibilities?" These are some of the things we came up with.

As you can see, they had some great thoughts and a pretty good grasp on some of the expectations of a president. One thing that made me giggle and was just such a funny kindergarten moment is when someone said they knew the name of our president right now, Barack Obama. He is such an adorable child, and afterwards he spoke up with a very concerned tone and said, "He doesn't make good choices!" Too funny! Someone's been listening in on political discussions at home! But, we used it as an opportunity to talk about how the president has to make a lot of tough decisions, and not everyone likes the decisions that he makes. It's just part of the job. Just like a part of our job is to show our children how to be respectful of the president and other people who are in charge. It was a good teachable moment.

We've also been talking about the different numbers that we can use to make ten. Usually, the social studies and science gets rushed a bit at the end of the day with me because math is such an important part of the curriculum, so I love being able to combine two core subjects into one lesson. Today, we smooshed together Presidents' Day learning with our math learning.

I started by reading George Washington's Teeth by Deborah Chandrah and Madeleine Comora. This book is great for learning about the history of America at a developmentally appropriate level, and allows for some discussion regarding number. It's also pretty funny, so the kids loved it a lot. 

Then, I showed them an example of a George Washington craft that I made, and modeled to them how I put it together and glueing his teeth on, then I asked them how many teeth were on top, and how many were on the bottom, and we created an addition equation. 

Then, I passed out their materials and let them create their own, choosing how many teeth they wanted on top and how many they wanted on the bottom, helping some of them along the way. Their final products turned out great! They were so proud of their little presidents!

I love how each of them were so different. I really like seeing the same activity done by everyone, and how they all look so personalized in the end. 

Some of our friends lost a few teeth in the process, so you can see one of them made an equation with 8 beans. 

Look at that smile!

The one in the middle didn't quite finish, but check out those colors. So creative!

Any time you can make a craft into an authentic learning activity in the classroom, I love it! You can learn with art, and that's what makes their final products so beautiful to me. 

Happy late Presidents' Day!

Andrea