Flag Day with kids!

• Flag Day is observed on June 14 each year, although it isn’t an official federal holiday.

• Congress authorized a red-white-and-blue flag with stars and stripes, the official national symbol of the United States of America, on June 14, 1777.

• In 1885, B.J. Cigrand, a grade school teacher in Waubeka, Wisc., held the first recognized formal observance of Flag Day at the Stony Hill School.

• In magazines and newspaper articles and public addresses over the following years, Cigrand continued to advocate for the observance of June 14 as Flag Day. Throughout the next three decades, other individuals and organizations promoted the establishment of Flag Day.

• On May 30, 1916, Pres. Woodrow Wilson established by a proclamation the anniversary of the Flag Resolution of 1777.

• Although Flag Day was celebrated in various communities for years after Wilson’s proclamation, it wasn’t until August 3, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14 of each year as National Flag Day.

• The act calls on the President to issue an annual proclamation calling for a national observance and for the display of the U.S flag on all federal government buildings.

• In a second joint resolution approved June 9, 1966, Congress requested the President to issue annually a proclamation designating the week during which June 14 falls as National Flag Week and to call on all citizens of the U.S. to display the flag during that week.

• The longest-running Flag Day parade is held annually in Quincy, Mass., which began in 1952 and is celebrating its 59th year in 2010.

• The largest Flag Day parade is held annually in Troy, N.Y., which usually draws about 50,000 spectators.

For all the educational information associated with Flag Day please visit our posting from last year - Click HERE

Flag Day Crafts and Activities
 

Download an American Flag here. You will need Adobe Acrobat to open it. You will have two flags, one wavy and one straight edged, mirrored, so that when you cut it out you will fold it in half and have a flag to see on each side. When folded it is about 4". You can either put it on a small dowel or a straw or some type of straight stick.

Patriotic Bead Patterning:
Gather several packages of red, white, and blue beads and white pipe cleaners. Make a few example patterns with the beads on the pipe cleaners. Set the remaining beads and pipe cleaners on a table and allow the children to copy any of the patterns on their own pipe cleaners.

Patriotic Bead Jewelry:

Let the imaginations go crazy!  Here are some seed bead patterns to follow:click HERE to download

Quotations for USA Flag Day  

  

Your flag and my flag,
And how it flies today
In your land and my land
And half a world away!
Rose-red and blood-red
The stripes forever gleam;
Snow-white and soul-white -
The good forefathers' dream;
Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright -
The gloried guidon of the day, a shelter through the night.
~Wilbur D. Nesbit, Your Flag and My Flag

 

 The whole inspiration of our life as a nation flows out from the waving folds of this banner.  ~Author Unknown

You're the emblem of
The land I love.
The home of the free and the brave.
~George M. Cohan  

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
~Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner 

Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War.  It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant.  It means justice.  It means liberty.  It means happiness.... Every color means liberty.  Every thread means liberty.  Every star and stripe means liberty.  ~Henry Ward Beecher