The Fourth of July

The Fourth of July

The Fourth of July
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 6
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	6.53

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		fireworks, rung, england, especially, queens, kings, beginning, jobs, celebration, separate, however, opportunity, exact, such, several, become
	content words:		Independence Day, Atlantic Ocean, Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson

Print The Fourth of July
edHelper.com subscriber options:

	Print The Fourth of July (font options, pick words for additional puzzles, and more)
	Quickly print reading comprehension
	Print a proofreading activity

Feedback on The Fourth of July

Leave your feedback on The Fourth of July (use this link if you found an error in the story)

The Fourth of July
By Jane Runyon

¹ Fireworks! Hot dogs! Parades! What a wonderful day for a family picnic! The Fourth of July holiday is all of these things. But why do we have a special celebration for a day in July? We usually have a party to celebrate somebody's birthday. Well, the Fourth of July is a special birthday. It is the birthday of our country. The official name for the Fourth of July holiday is Independence Day. Let's see if we can discover some of the reasons it has become such a special day in our country.

² A long time ago, over four hundred years ago to be exact, there were some very unhappy people living in Europe. Europe is a continent across the Atlantic Ocean, almost 4000 miles from where we live now. England is joined together with other countries in the area to form Great Britain. In the 1500's and 1600's, the person in charge of Great Britain was a king or queen. A king or queen is sometimes called a monarch. Kings and queens can make their own rules and tell people what to do and what to think. Many people in Great Britain did not like the king or queen telling them what to do, especially when it came to how they were to worship God. These people were so unhappy with the monarch that several groups of them decided to leave Great Britain to find new homes somewhere else. They wanted to be free to worship however they pleased. There weren't many places that they could go to.

Paragraphs 3 to 4:
For the complete story with questions: click here for printable

Copyright © 2008 edHelper