American Symbols

My third grade class is finishing our unit on American Symbols.  We have read several non fiction books about the flag, the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, other American symbols.  Here are a couple of books that we have used.  

The Bald Eagle is a wonderful book seems to be written on around a third grade level. The story is told by a man who is the bird keeper, he tells many facts throughout the book, including the debate about whether to have the wild turkey or the bald eagle as the national bird.  

The Story of the Statue of Liberty has wonderful illustrations that show the different stages of the statue being built.  It give a lot of information about the building, raising money, and delivering the statue.  The story moves quickly and kept my students engaged while listening.  We then filled out a graphic organizer with six different facts about the statue and finished with a short report on The Statue of Liberty.

I found a link on youtube that had an art teacher that taught kindergartners how to draw the Statue of Liberty.  I love to draw and incorporate art if I can, so I taught my students how to draw the statue.  Don't they look adorable???

We also studied about the flag, Betsy Ross, etc. So we colored some flags too.  I can't wait until our bald eagle reports are done, so that we can put all of this up on the bulletin board!  Although, to be honest, I may be a little sad to take down those cute pirates.  My class go so into drawing the Statue of Liberty that they keep drawing me pictures of her.  

They even have started drawing pictures of my student teacher and me!!  I see more art in our classroom in the future.  

We traced one of our shoes on a piece of brown construction paper.  Then we traced both hands, cut them out and curled them around a pencil.  We glued the wings on the sides of the shoe print we traced.  Then I found a clipart of an eagles head, we colored the beak and eye, cut it out, and finally glued it to the heel side of the shoe print.  We cut orange feet, no pattern just what they thought they looked like.  This is what they turned out like, what do you think???  

After the holiday we will finish our unit and I will post the bulletin board picture.  Until then have a great holiday!