Think of your favorite ice cream flavor. Can you guess how many workers it takes to produce that delicious cone of mint chocolate chip? 
Celebrate the achievements of workers in the United States throughout its history with the exploration of Labor Day. Established as a national holiday in 1894, Labor Day recognizes workers and the labor movement. Americans today mark this holiday with parades, news stories, and personal celebrations on the first Monday in September.
Check out these ready-to-use resources that may help you weave Labor Day into your instructional day a little easier!
EdPuzzle
In this Edpuzzle Original, your students will understand the origins of Labor Day by reflecting upon the contributions of working people and the achievements won by organized labor.
Seesaw
There are many activities shared in the Community Library that you can easily assign to your students. Engage your students with choice boards, videos, writing, and more!
Discovery Education
Discovery Education highlights Labor Day in many ways. Check out the three ready-to-assign Studio Activities below for grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8 (be sure to see more information in the teacher notes section). Not sure what SOS instructional strategies are? Check out this article to learn more about SOS. All grades, K-12, can access the Labor Day channel for DE Picks, video segments, images, encyclopedia articles, and podcasts!
Book Creator
Allowing students the option of being the author and creating a digital book is an engaging and great way to assess knowledge. Primary students can connect Labor Day to a possible future job they would be interested in. Consider using sentence frames to support learners, if necessary. Upper elementary and higher can research a specific career, or the history of Labor Day and create their own digital nonfiction book.
Want to take the digital book to the next level? Download a template of our own into your Book Creator app on your iPad. Add any text, formatting, etc. Check out these two templates:
To share a Book Creator template, view the book from the shelf within Book Creator, select the share icon (box with an up arrow), choose “Export as ePub” and choose the way you would like to share out to your students. Students will need to open the file with Book Creator.
A few other ways you could use Book Creator centered around Labor Day include
- composing thank-you notes or cards to community helpers—police officers, firefighters, paramedics, postal workers,etc.and publishing the efile to be delivered electronically,
- creating a timeline of labor history and share with other classes, parents, etc.,
- reading a book about community helpers and challenging students to make an A-Z book of community helpers.
Lesson Plans
Perhaps you are more interested in an entire lesson plan for Labor Day. Here are a few resources just for you!
- Draw on your students’ prior knowledge to help them understand the importance of the labor movement with this Labor Matters lesson plan from Learning For Justice for grades 6-8 and 9-12.
- Help students commemorate Labor Day by learning the meaning of child labor. Then, they learn ways that they can take action to fight it with this What is Child Labor lesson plan for grades 4-6.
- Focus on the changes that occurred for women during World War II by presenting this Women and World War II lesson plan for grades 3-6.
- Students learn about the history of the Labor Day holiday and write a newspaper about the various people and organizations involved with this Labor Day Newspaper lesson plan for grades 3-7.
Labor Day is an exciting day for students because they have the day off of school. How did you incorporate this holiday into your classroom to make the day off more meaningful? Leave a comment below to let us know.
