Constitution Day is September 17. Classrooms all across the country will celebrate this important day in American history. Teachers across the country will be teaching about fairness, rules, and rights.
This is a great time to introduce primary sources. The U.S. Constitution might feel like a big concept for little learners, but it’s the birthday of the nation’s rulebook. Kids can see what it looks like. The preamble has everything you need to teach for primary kids.
Introduction Activities
The following are a few ideas that will help put your students in the mindset to think about the time around the signing of the constitution. These activities include: Paintings, Statues, Songs, and Books.
Thinking through Pictures
A low-prep way to put your students into the middle of that time in history is through paintings. Even though this is simple, it a powerful tool to us as an introduction.
- Project one painting as big as you can on your classroom screen.
- Bring your class close to the screen. Let them look for 2 minutes without saying anything.
- Tell them what it is, then ask “What do you see?” “What makes you think that?” “What are they doing?”
- You could write phrases or words on an anchor chart.
Signers' Hall
There is a great online exhibit you can show your class with life-sized statues of men from the Constitutional Convention. You can move the camera around to explore each statue. Click to visit the the Signers’ Hall online exhibit.
Say it in Song!
I am a child of “School House Rock”. I learned about the Preamble from their song. You can find the short video and song of the Preamble without popups here.
Big Ideas in Little Books
There are many books about the Constitution, but many of them are too wordy for primary. My favorite one is We the Kids. (click on the left to check that one out). Click on the covers below to see the others. I do not buy from Amazon unless it is the cheapest. It just has good info to check out.
Interactive Activities
After learning about the US constitution, the students would be all set to make a Class constitution! You could pattern it after the constitutional convention and have groups come up with rights phrases they see as important. Once the whole group agrees on the rights, the groups could work on crafting rules.
Once the whole group agrees on a list of rights, the whittling down can begin. The whole group have to choose 5 rights, voting. Then, the writing can begin:
- You can craft the document totally in kid friendly words, but I like to use a few of the original words so they can understand the preamble a bit better.
- I use: We the (students) of (room 108), in order to ( ), establish ( ), insure ( ), promote ( ), and secure ( ) , do ordain and establish this constitution of ( ).
- I explain what each fancy verb means, and we plug our rights into the document.
- I print the big words. The pairs write the rights on the sentence strips.
Showing What they Know
The perfect primary source is the Preamble. Even though the words are big, you have everything there that you need to study the rights of an American citizen. When you break it down phrase by phrase, you give your students a look into the foundation of American beliefs and values.
Constitution Resources
Teaching is a HUGE job. Just the day to day running of the classroom is a full-time job. Add behavior management, lesson planning, and teacher meetings, and you have little to no time left to plan Social Studies. Please allow me to give you a leg up with lesson crafting.
Thanks for reading, I hope you got a few ideas to use. If you like what you read and would like to see more about Social studies, go here.
Click on one of the covers to see if you can use a done-for-you resource.
Jacque Jones
Loves Gilmore Girls, Pikmin, & Kindle!
Taught Kinder-1st & 2nd. Teacher Author
Social Studies Matters