Philippine Independence Day for Preschoolers

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June 12 is right around the corner. We plan to learn about Philippine Independence Day in our usual way – fun, gentle, and literature-based.

I went to National Bookstore without a specific title in mind and was just hoping for the best. I looked through the books published by Tahanan Books knowing beforehand that its books are mostly well-written and beautifully illustrated.

When I could not find books written in Filipino, I “settled” for Bandila: The Story of the Philippine Flag by Merci Melchor because it’s such an obvious choice for the holiday. It tells the story of the Philippine revolution in simple words and shows the evolution of our flag in pictures. However, it is still too much of a textbook for my taste and my child’s age, with its names and dates, and I kept on looking.

Another title that I bought was The Chair King by Karen Flores and Mark Justiniani. It seemed like fun and I really just wanted to buy a Filipino book, albeit written in English, right at that moment. Talk about emotional intelligence!

The Chair King is the story of Esteban Dospordos, a giant who loves chairs but can’t find any that’s big enough for him. He goes into a wild rampage, ruining chairs everywhere, determined that no one else can enjoy a chair if he can’t!

The story ends with great festivity when the townspeople’s plan to defeat the giant works. It was on my third reading of the story that it hit me that I had accidentally picked the PERFECT book to introduce young children to our country’s Independence Day!

With the two books, I was able to create a short unit study that we will do in the first two weeks of June, just in time to celebrate Philippine Independence Day. I am sharing it with you as a PDF download. Using the two books, you can talk to your child about: