Happy Friday, teachers! My calendar held a yummy surprise for me this morning: Thanksgiving Day is less than two weeks away. And this means it’s time for our first annual Gobble, Gobble Giveaway. To have your name entered in this book giveaway, simply share a favorite Thanksgiving-themed activity before the end of Monday, November 15. Together we’ll create a menu of favorite teaching ideas for celebrating turkey day. Gotta love that!
Have a great weekend!
Gobble, gobble,
Diane
PS: My third-graders loved this supersimple idea. Each morning I’d write a holiday-related word on the board and challenge them to make ten or more words using only the letters in the word.
feast: at, ate, eat, fat, sat, set, safe, tea, sea, seat
thankful: thank, tank, than, tan, fan, hat, hut, an, ant, aunt
harvest: hat, rat, vat, sat, set, rest, tea, vest, sea, rat
Pilgrims: rim, grim, limp, girls, rip, rig, slim, sip, is, grip
Squanto: nut, squat, ton, tan, sun, son, not, to, on, an
Congrats to our drawing winner, Cheryl!
For the month of November I have the children make a turkey for their book report. The body of the turkey they can just draw. The feathers are the events from the book. They write the title and author on the body and their name on the back. The feathers are setting, main characters, minor characters, problem, events, and solution. It is fun to see the creative turkeys that come to our room in November.
For the month of Novemeber, we make a “Stuff yourself with a good book” bulletin board in the library. We draw the body and head of the turkey on a white background. We cut feathers out of all colors of construction paper and have the kids write the title and author of their favorite book on a feather. Then we hang the feathers on the turkey. The more favorite books the kids have, the more “stuffed” our turkey gets!
One of our Thanksgiving activities is to frost a shortbread cookie with chocolate frosting. Add corn candy for feathers. A hershey kiss for the body and red hots become the waddle.
This become our dessert for our pizza feast in honor of Thanksgiving.
I read the story Turkey Trouble, by Wendi Silvano. Then I send home a letter and a turkey and they have to disguise their “Nervous Turkey” so he won’t be eaten on Thanksgiving.
We also dress like pilgrims and indians and have a feast (everyone brings something to share).
After the holidays, we graph who ate what for Thanksgiving.
I have the children draw a turkey and then a conversation bubble. They write what a turkey would say if it could talk.
In preschool we will be making our own paint with cranberries. Place about 1/2 cup of cranberries in a large ziploc bag, allow the students to roll over the bag several times each with a rolling pin. When complete, snip off the corner of the bag and drain the contents into a container and voila….make your own paint!
I love to do A Turkey’s Last Plea. The students must write to me and convince me why I should not eat them for Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a great practice for persuasive/creative writing. The kids are always so inventive with their reasons.
We read a lot of books about people wanting to hunt turkeys to eat them for Thanksgiving dinner. We made a class book that helped the turkeys hide.
Each child filled in a page that read
“Oh No!” cried the turkey
“I’m going to lose my head! Could you please eat __________________ instead?”
The students fill in the blank with their favorite food not served at thanksgiving. The kindergarten kids love it and the book turns out so cute.
I love to have a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in my room. I send a note home and each student is invited to bring in their favorite snack to share with the class. Oh, they just love this! We’ve had pickles, cupcakes, brownies, slim jim, chips, you name it! While the students each their snacks, they watch the dvd, Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving! It a fun way to also teach about sharing and Thanksgiving.
I teach Pre-K. Each year for we learn about the Pilgrims and Indians. We experiment with different types of berries to dye material. Then we boil tea leaves (coffee works too) and soak tea-shirts (men’s size small). Let tea-shirts dry, then run through a rinse cycle. The kids design and decorate their shirts with paint to look like Indian clothes. I cut the bottom of shirt and sleeves into strips and add beads. We then we plan a Thanksgiving feast and invite all the parents. For that feast the parents are to come as Pilgrims and the students are the Indians.
I have the children trace their hands. On each finger, I have them write about one thing they are thankful for.
We do a making words activity with the turkey feathers. My students make a turkey, then on the feathers they use stamps or foam letters to build a word. After they are done, they put the words in ABC order on their turkey.
I teach preschoolers and November is a great month to introduce percussion instruments. We begin by discussing Native Americans in the Thanksgiving story. Later we introduce different kinds of drums, rain sticks and bells. By the time Thanksgiving comes we have combined theses themes with simple round dances to have our own mini “pow wow” along with our school’s feast.
We read lots of Thanksgiving books and sometimes perform a play. Students then make a turkey and write what they are thankful for on each of the feathers. We glue the turkeys on construction paper. I laminate them and send them home to use as a placemat on Thanksgiving Day. It’s a big hit!
My students love making and eating this sweet cornucopia. I ask each student to bring in an item to share such as m&ms, cereal, marshmallows, peanuts, candy corn, raisins, etc. Each child is given an ice cream cone bowl to serve as the basket. We arrange our tables together and have a feast.
For thanksgiving last year my class made trail mix. Each person braught a differnet ingrident like people bring different foods on Thanksgiving. We made the trail mix and talked about how we were thankful for everyone bringing something. My kindergartners and preschool kids loved it.
For the last few years, I have baked cornbread and made homemade butter. The kids love it. We usually invite another class to be our guests. It is a lot of fun.
At my school, the students in grades K to 2nd perform a Thanksgiving program for the parents on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. To decorate the gymnasium where the program takes place, we send home an outline of a feather and have each student and their family decorate it. Then the teachers make a big turkey body and we put the feathers all around it.
At the end of the program, we have the students and their families stand around the edges of the gymnasium. Then we sing and dance the Turkey Pokey together.
This year along with listing the many reasons we are thankful for family and doing some of the more tradition ideaas others have shared, we are going to make cards to send to people who are in the service and spending time away from their families as well as send cards to soup kitchens to let them know that people care about them.
We have trees with pine cones on them. If we can get to them before the squirles, we get feathers and glue them in add eyes and a waddle. We had to take a tree out this year so I think we will use some of the wood as a base for the turkeys.
I am a first grade teacher and every year I have my students tell how they would cook the Thanksgiving Turkey. I take all of their recipes and make a book to send home with each student. This year I created a voice thread of the students telling how they would cook the Thanksgiving Turkey. This has always been one of my favorite projects with my students but this year is the best. Nothing beats being able to hear the students’ voice tell how they would cook their turkey.
I teach second grade. We make turkeys to use as decorations in the cafeteria on our Thanksgiving luncheon tables. I have a pattern for fanned out tail feathers, and head(followed over two sided).These patterns need to be run off on card stock. The students color these using bright colored markers. I then prepare slits in an apple and the students use it as the body of the turkey. We then place them on the table as decorations for our feast.
For Thanksgiving my 6th grade class always has a Feast with the first grade class. We provide food for both classes and we help the first graders make a turkey out of an apple with toothpicks, marshmallows, raisins, and candy corn. We do it as a service project. My students enjoy working with the first graders and helping them and the first graders love the attention.
We have been talking about Turkeys so we asked the kids if they can tell us something about Turkeys and we get all kinds of different answers. It is so cute listening to them tell you how they think a turkey looks or what a turkey can do. I love working with kids they make me smile everyday.
I teach preschool. For music/movement, we do the Turkey Jerky. It is like the Hokey Pokey, but we call it the Turkey Jerky. Instead of arm it is a wing, instead of leg it is drum stick, for bottom we use tail feathers, for nose you say beak,neck is waddle, etc. Of course instead of the words “You do the Hokey Pokey, you say, You do the Turkey jerky and you turn yourself around, that’s what its all about, hey!
I teach kindergarten. We paint a small and a large paper plate brown. We add paper feathers, beak, feet and pipe cleaner legs. The turkeys are displayed in the hall. Parents are invited to join us for Thanksgiving lunch. After lunch we get together for a 30 play about the 1st Thanksgiving. Parents enjoy all the singing, dancing and costumes.
We do a short skit. A boy and a girl find a hungry turkey. The boy feeds it a cucumber and the girl says, “Turkeys don’t like cucumbers”. Then the boy feeds the turkey a carrot. The girl says, “Turkeys don’t like carrots.” Last the boy feeds the turkey a corn. The girl says, “He’s eating it turkeys like corn!” We use a stuffed turkey and plastic food. The children love playing both parts.(girl/boy)The girl part moves the turkey head. I teach 3-5 year old special education and they love it. They don’t always say the words, but the feed and turn the turkey’s head.
Make a turkey to display on a wall without the tail feathers. Cut out different colored feathers and have the children write something that they are grateful for on the feathers. Put the feathers on the turkey and see how many things your students are grateful for.
I teach VPK and each year I ask them how they would cook a turkey. Boy do you get some interesting answers. We make this into a book and share with parents. I also send home a feather shape on card stock and have the children decorate and bring back in to dress Tom Turkey.
I teach preschool 3-5 year olds. Every year we do a social service project. This year we are making center pieces which will be donated to the Senior Citizens facilities near us. I t is a great way to teach sharing to the little ones and the seniors get to enjoy something cute on their table for Thanksgiving.
We turn our room into a thanksgiving haven. We put pumpkin pie filling out for the sensory table. I have the kids paint with turkey feathers to native american music. We enjoyu a lunch with the parents that is a turkey feast that the kids help make.
I have my First Graders write a Thank-you note to the helpers in our school. They tell them why they’re thankful for them in one or two sentences.They color the picture (frame for the thank-you note),and hand-deliver the note to their special recipient.
Fun for all concerned!
I teach Pre-School and each year at Thanksgiving we color or paint a Thanksgiving picture to give to the residents at our Elderly Housing Apartments. Weather permitting we walk to the apartments and tape the pictures on each door. If the residents are home, sometimes we sing a short song and then wish them a “Happy Thanksgiving!” The residents just love seeing the children! We also do this at Christmas and Easter.
I read a story and tell students about The First Thanksgiving. Then I have students cut out pictures of foods that were eaten at the first Thanksgiving and glue them to a small paper plate. We compare and contrast the foods. We also write about Thanksgiving foods using describing words. I have a handout where students have to circle foods that were eaten and the pictures include foods that weren’t at the first Thanksgiving like ice cream.
I love this time of year…..tons of holiday fun! I set up a teepee in my classroom. My husband made a frame for me and then I cover it with brown kraft paper and burlap over that layer. The kids design Native American paintings on muslin and when they are dry I rough stitch them onto the burlap. It is large enough for 2 kiddos to sit in it with room. They use it to read or play games like memory or file folders. The kids love it!
Also, some of their favorite activities are: the Turkey Trot (like Hokey Pokey), the Thanksgiving Word Wall, Turkey Feather Math (small paper plates I colored brown and drew on eyes, beak and wattle…they use colored plastic clothes pins to make math problems. For exampe, 3 blue ‘feathers’ + 2 pink ‘feathers’= 5 ‘feathers’.). I also do the Family Turkey project where each family decorates their construction paper turkey in creative disguises. We wrap up the month with a Stone Soup Thanksgiving Feast with 2 of the other classrooms. Everyone adds alittle something to the feast and we all give thanks for various blessings…family, friends, pets, toys, ect.
I also do the turkey with the different colored feathers trick. We will also be making picture frames that the students will be able to put a photograph of something they are thankful for.
Teaching kindergarten truly brings out the exciting activities for all the holidays. We create many things throughout the month that cultivate in a Thanksgiving feast which we cook together in class the last day before our vacation. The students also predict and graph if they they like eating turkey. We will be making turkey centerpieces for the children to take home to add to their Thanksgiving table decorations. Gobble Gobble to all!
We make cornbread, applesauce, butter, with parents help. Then we have a Thanksgiving Feast the next day with the foods we made and some turkey, venison, lobster, a few kernels of corn, other foods the Pilgrims may have eaten. We wear Pilgrim and Native American costumes. Chief Massosoit (our principal) surprises us with a visit, wearing the chief’s headress we made the week before. This finishes our study of the beginnings of the United States of America.
We make an edible turkey centerpiece to share at our Thanksgiving Feast. We use a honey dew or cantaloupe for the body, a pear for the head, raisins for the eyes and cut red pepper for the waddle and feet. Then the children thread wooden skewers with chunks of cheese and grapes to insert for the tail feathers.