Clubhouse Flag

After looking at several photos of the United States flag in books, we decided to use a few different ingredients and make a flag of our own.

In the Clubhouse Classroom I set out a tray of a batch of homemade play dough (you can find our very basic play dough recipe here), red, white and blue water beads, and confetti stars. Now it was time to get to flag building.

First, I asked my Clubhouse Kid what shape the flag was.

"Rectangle!!"

We rolled out and made a rectangle out of the play dough. The rest was entirely up to him, and he got right to work.

We talked about how the United States flag has fifty stars, and how the 50 stars represents the 50 States in the United States.

"Can I just put 12 stars for now?!??" 

 Looking at our nearby flag, he started on the first stripe, noting that

"..the stripes are rectangles too", and "The first and bottom stripe are red".

He counted 13 stripes in all on the flag, and while he worked I explained that the 13 stripes represent the 13 British colonies that declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. Yes, I said that. Yes, he's 3. I feel it's important to explain things just as they are. If he asks questions, I expand. If not, we move on. 

He didn't ask anything in this case, he was busy working on getting the water beads to stay put. He decided using his finger to push a row of space into the dough and then adding the water beads was his preferred technique.

Adding his "bead stripes" we continued our conversation, talking about how Independence Day is this week, and yes, I even mentioned the Declaration of Independence. He listened, asked a few questions, all the while focused on finishing up his flag. He didn't use the blue water beads at all, staying true to the actual colors of the stripes on the U.S. flag he was using as a reference.

When he got to the last stripe he decided to add a few more stars. He was counting to 20, deciding that 50 was too many stars for his flag.

Then he looked up from his work smiling.

"I made a little flag!"

Yes, you sure did buddy :)

We're almost ready for the 4th,

Ms. Liz

For more fun with water beads, check out our Adventures in Water Beads link-up here.

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