Children love hats. They love dressing up, looking silly, laughing at other kids looking silly and playing parts. Use this love of hats to talk about jobs, act out roles, make books come to life and best of all do colorful and exciting craft projects. Plan your lessons out carefully beforehand, gathering the necessary materials and ensuring that you have enough adults to help the children in their crafts.

Role Playing
Gather up some different occupational related hats—a construction hat, a sailor’s hat, a cowboy hat, et cetera. Point out each hat to the children and what kind of job the person wearing it does. You may also include fantasy hats like a princess hat, a crown, or a plastic knight’s helmet. Have your children pretend to act like whatever character wears that particular hat. Then make them change hats and have them act the new part. Continue until everyone has worn every hat.

Make Your Own
Few arts and crafts projects are more fun that making your own silly hats. Make traditional captain’s hats from folded newspaper, or use paper plates with a hole cut out for the brim and a paper bowl glued on top for the crown. Roll up the bottom edge of a paper bag until it fits each child’s head. All of these can be painted in bright colors, or according to the theme of the day.

Books
Read books like the Bernstein Bears' “Old Hat, New Hat,” Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat” or "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," Jan Brett’s “The Hat" or Holiday Hats
Incorporate hats into your holiday lessons. Make a Christmas tree hat by decorating large green cones of paper or cover baseball caps with red, white and blue decorations for Independence Day. Create pilgrim hats as a part of teaching the history of Thanksgiving: cut out a black sheet of construction paper in a hat shape, decorate with white paper band and yellow paper buckle, then use poster board to make a band to hold the hats on the front of children's heads.