Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and I always like to do a little something with my students to teach them about American holidays that they may have never heard of before. With Thanksgiving, I don’t like to focus on the traditional “Thanksgiving story,” which celebrates an isolated event, completely out of the context of the rest of history. However, I think the idea of reflecting and being thankful for the things that we have is important and can be easily understood by younger children.
As I’ve said in previous posts, I LOVE doing holiday crafts with the kids because it’s fun and different from their normal classroom routine. Last year, with my youngest students (1st and 2nd grade), we made the typical hand turkeys. This year, I think I am going to make something like this toilet paper roll turkey. I never throw toilet paper rolls out, so I have a ridiculous collection of them to use for crafts at school! As a side note, I would show your students lots of pictures of turkeys and chickens and illustrate the difference between the two because they will definitely think that their turkeys are chickens.
Happy and Blessed Home also has a great FREE download full of Thanksgiving activities! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to use them, but they’re definitely worth a look.
With 3rd and 4th grade, I made paper strip pumpkins like these, but they wrote one thing that they were thankful for on each strip before they made their pumpkins. They were very cute. This year, I am thinking of making a foldable craft like this to switch it up! I downloaded that free template from Easy Peasy and Fun, added some Thankgiving clipart, and want to have the kids write one thing that they are thankful for on each “flower petal.” This A-Z “I Am Thankful For…” printable is pretty cool too and could be a nice warm-up to do before making some of these crafts!
With 5th and 6th grade, we did an activity like this with lollipops. Each student chose a lollipop from a bag and had to say, “I am thankful for…,” based on the color (blue = person, yellow = food, etc.). After, we made these Thanksgiving cooties catchers. I think I edited them slightly, but they were a hit!
This year, I want to try to do a Thanksgiving Mad Lib activity like this one with my older students. We did one last year for St. Patrick’s Day, and they thought it was hilarious! I’ll probably type it up in a Word document, so that it’s “landscape” and looks better on the SmartBoard and so I can edit some of the vocabulary, but it’s a great way to practice different parts of speech, as well as listening/reading comprehension.
Update (15/11/18): I found this amazing STEAM Storytime Challenge activity to go with a book (Balloons over Broadway) about the man who invented the HUGE Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade floats. You can find tons of read alouds of the book on YouTube, and, then, let the kids make their own balloon floats! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get my school to buy the balloons for me, but I love the idea (we will probably make paper puppets or something as a backup plan).
Update (20/11/18): I made this worksheet to go with my balloon building challenge, and I decided to show my younger students the parade floats too, but we’re going to make puppets like these instead of working with the balloons!
Update (27/11/18): Their balloon floats look AMAZING! Mickey Mouse and Peppa Pig were my favorites:
¡Buena Suerte!
Inglés con Christina 