We even had a small space left after Obama, so I cut some yellow construction paper to size and created a flip card. On the outside of the card is a giant question mark. Inside the card, I taped a small mirror, implying that the next president could be any one of my students. My younger kids just loved it, and kept calling out “It’s me. It’s me. I am the next president.” Here is one of my older students looking in the mirror…
Next, I wrote out the mnemonic phrases on construction paper and posted them near the bottom of the corkboard. I then tossed the second half of the cards on a small table and challenged any kid who came in to put the cards in order. Here we have the first young man to accept my challenge.
Let’s just say that the activity has proven very popular. Whenever a group of kids has put the cards in order, they bring them to me and we check them together by saying the mnemonic phrases out loud. Lately, when I do so, everyone in the room chants with me. I see them checking out the board and phrases when I am not looking. Yesterday, I think I checked those cards every ten minutes. It was such a pleasure hearing third and fourth graders quietly arguing about why Cleveland has two cards, and why Tyler came next, not that “guy with the beard.” They were causally using obscure presidential names—names that many adults I know wouldn’t recognize. 
I have slowly begun adding challenges to the game for the older kids. I talked earlier this week about the eight presidents who had died in office and why. (We even marked the four presidents who had been shot with "bullet holes," one of the kid's ideas, not mine) I have also begun challenging them to separate out individual cards and tell me how they died. Consequently, players have begun reading the back of the cards. I have also started to ask kids if they can point to the presidents who were alive during the Revolution, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War etc. You get the idea. We have had a number of great discussions about each of those events because the kids begin to ask questions in order to answer my original question.
How much will sink in and last? Who knows, but it is a delight to find them interested.Click here to access the card deck I used.
Give it a try, and as always, Happy Historybusting…
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