Celebrating the Fourth of July- Popsicle Stick Flags

I bought myself a plan book last week to try and get myself to be more of an organized homeschool mom. I found it challenging to balance the desire to get a lot done, and the danger of overwhelming my little scholars.  As it turns out, it wasn't so hard after all.  

My subject goals for the day where speech/articulation therapy, math, music, and social studies. It seemed like a lot, and I thought it would be a matter of spreading out mini lessons through the entire day, when in actuality we managed to cover it all in the morning by incorporating it into a craft.

I set out popsicle sticks, red and white paint, blue construction paper, star stickers, glue, and an American flag.

So here's the rundown of what we did today:

Speech/articulation therapy: 

Using the words assigned by his SLP, Mr. Three-year-old Chatterbox received a silver star sticker for every correctly articulated word. He added each sticker to a small blue piece of paper to be a part of our flag later. Today he worked on /h/ in the initial position and did GREAT! So proud of the progress he is making.

Sticker play is also a great activity for fine motor skills.  The size of the stickers we used today definitely proved to be a challenge for my boys.

Math: 

We counted the number of red stripes on the flag and the number of white stripes. We counted the number of popsicle sticks in each group before he painted them either red or white. When he had finished painting all his sticks (which turned out to be the hardest part of the morning... for whatever reason the kids were anti-mess today, go figure!) we put glue on a larger piece of construction paper for him to mirror the ABAB type pattern (in this case red, white, red, white) of the flag's stripes. He did great with the pattern, better actually than I thought he would based on previous attempts at recognizing patterns.  And when telling Daddy about his day and showing off his art at dinner he used the word "pattern" which made me very happy.

Once all his popsicle stick stripes were in place he added the blue paper with stars from his speech work.

Social Studies: 

During the morning's activities, I explained that the flag was a symbol to represent the country we live in. I also mentioned the significance of the 50 stars and the 13 stripes, but I didn't expect this to resonate with him at all, nor did it. My goal was to start teaching him the pledge of allegiance line by line throughout the week. So far I have met resistance to this, but we can give it another shot before bed (oh the beauty of an open homeschool schedule!)

Music & Movement: 

After finishing our popsicle flag craft, the boys and I marched through the house waving flags and singing God Bless America. Only the 1.5 year old appreciated my singing and "sang" along... in fact, he wouldn't let me stop.

The little big kid is already too cool for me and wanted me to "stop that! just march" (which, by the way, adds gross motor activity to the list of areas we covered today!)