A New Twist on Father's Day Activities

Every year teachers have to come up with ways for students to honor their parents, grandparents, or other care givers. While this may seem like a simple task, it isn’t. A teacher’s role is to help children meet academic goals and lead them on the path to success. The last thing a teacher wants to do is cause them any stress or emotional damage, but sometimes this might happen inadvertently.

For Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, you might have your students make a card, flower, cardboard tie, etc. for their parents. But there are students who may not have a mother or father, are being brought up by grandparents, have a stepmother and a mother . . . the list goes on and on. While this fact shouldn’t provide stress for you, it is something to think about. Before these special holidays arrive, make sure you get to know your students, and their families, so you can be sensitive to their needs. With Father’s Day coming up, this is a time to make sure that everyone in your class has a positive and fulfilling experience.

A Focus on Ancestry

While you can still provide students time to work on a card or art project to honor a special person in their life, you can celebrate this holiday by having students learn about their ancestry. Using the Internet, have students do research on the background of their family names and have them learn about where their families originally came from. They can interview family members to find out more about where their ancestors came from, and use it describe how they came to live where they do now. Students should write down the information they find and use it to write a story about their background. In their story, they should include quotes from their interviews with their family members and any pictures they have to go along with their ancestry project. This is a great way to honor fathers, mothers, and all family members.

Take a Walk in the Shoes of One of Your Relatives

Another way to honor parents or other special relatives is to get to know a little bit about them. Students could conduct an interview with a father or other parental figure and find out a little bit about what they do each day. They could ask them about their job, their favorite hobbies, even their favorite television shows. The idea is to give them the opportunity to share what they think is important. Afterwards, students could create a poster depicting all the things they learned about their interviewee. They could use pictures, write descriptions, or even make a collage. The idea is to create artwork that describes their family member and is creative.

The important thing is to make sure that students realize that Father’s Day is meant to be a special time to honor someone special in their life. One of the best ways to do this might be to ask your students how they would like to celebrate the day. Students can come up with many creative and interesting ways to do this. All you have to do is provide the materials and time for them to realize their aspirations. For more Father’s Day ideas see the lesson below.

Father’s Day Lesson Plans:

It's All in the Family With Mother's & Father's Day

Students create a family tree and learn about families in this lesson. They discuss the different members in a family.

Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

In this lesson, students learn about the latest technological devices. Then they create a device that they think a father would like.

Father's Day Lesson: The Story of Last Names

Students learn about the history of last names. They talk about how last names developed in Medieval Times, for example, a person with the name Shoemaker made shoes.

Lesson Plan Title : Superhero Dad

In this lesson students pick a characteristic about their dad that they think makes him a superhero. Students could even create a comic strip showing how their superhero dad fights wrongdoing.