Today I am going to share a second Bill Martin, Jr. book for the Virtual Book Club for Kids. If you missed our post last week, we shared The Little Squeegy Bug. Today's book is I Pledge Allegiance and it is co-authored with Michael Sampson. Now the main words to this book are the Pledge of Allegiance:I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
What I like about this book is that it has explanations of what the words mean throughout it. Each page only has a few words on it and then a picture to represent those words and a definition or explanation of the words. I thought this was a perfect way to introduce the Pledge of Allegiance to Hazel. We have read it several times and discuss what each part means. Plus the Pledge of Allegiance is said at her school each day.
To go with this book, we did two simple activities. The first was for Hazel to design her own flag. She was very excited not to have to make the United States flag since we have done this before. I gave her a piece of white construction paper and several different colors cut into strips and different shapes punched out with punches, plus glue, scissors and the punches. Here is what she came up with though I do not think she completely finished it yet. She worked on it until she got tired of it.
While she worked on it, we talked about pledges a bit. I asked her if she wanted to write her own pledge. She did. Her pledge went something like:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of Hazel...under God indivisible.
I explained I was thinking more like pledging to Love God and such. We brainstormed some ideas and I wrote them down. Then she "signed" her pledge.
The other neat thing about the book is it gives a bit of history on the Pledge of Allegiance. I never knew it was written for children.
So that is our second book by Bill Martin, Jr. If you are interested in adding your own activities/crafts to go with a Bill Martin, Jr. book, please do so here. Also be sure to check out some of the amazing other ideas shared for his different books.
