Thanksgiving Fun!

Ohmygoodness guys! It is literally almost Christmas and I still haven't posted about Thanksgiving. I am already on vacation-mode and I still have four days of work left. Hopefully I will be a posting machine over break because I am WAAAAAAY behind. (Not likely…haha) But here's a start! 

We focused on Thanksgiving the week and a half before our break and we had so much fun! Even though I already had a mini-unit for Thanksgiving, I created a new one with Math and Literacy activities. 

Of course we started out talking about the food. Yum yum! I read them one of my favorite Thanksgiving books:

And then we made our own class book about our favorite Thanksgiving foods:

(pumpkin pie)

(apple pie)

(mashed potatoes and brownies)

(turkey)

I always try to make a word search because my kids LOVE THEM! Its a great way to review vocabulary and it keeps them so entertained: 

In math that week we were learning about coins and adding money. We played a Thanksgiving shopping game where the kids were shopping for Thanksgiving food and they had to match the coins they would need to buy each item. They then recorded the coins on a recording sheet. They asked to play this game all week! 

Another math game they played was Turkey Place Value where they had to match a turkey holding a number with the correct tens and ones. 

Another activity we did to review place value was a Thanksgiving counting book where they had to count the objects and decide how many tens and ones there were:

To review several math concepts, we made Turkey Number crafts where the kids chose a number and had to illustrate the number in different ways on the turkey's feathers (standard, expanded, number sentence, coins, tallies and tens and ones): 

We also did several Thanksgiving themed word problems:

In reading we played a Turkey Sight Word game where each student rolls the die and has to pick that many cards out of a bag. In order to keep the cards, you have to be able to read the word:

But watch out and don't pick the turkey dinner card or you lose all your cards! Aww man! 

Another reading game the kids did was making words. They used letter cards to make as many words as they could out of Happy Thanksgiving:

One of my favorite reading/writing activities we did was our Thanksgiving ABC book where the kids and to come up with something Thanksgiving related for each letter of the alphabet:

(quiet)

We, of course, read a ton of great books! Here are just a few:

 

We started learning about procedural or how-to writing that week so we experimented with the genre by writing how to make a Thanksgiving dinner. Got some pretty creative responses:

(First you get cranberries. Next you smash it. Last you eat it.)

(First catch the turkey. Net you put it in the oven. Last you eat it.)

We had to do some crafts because I can't go more than a few days without getting the paint out! The kids used their fingers to decorate their own maize and we added it to our bulletin board with our pumpkins from October. So cute! 

 We definitely watched Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and the kids loved every minute of it. After we watched it, we made a Snoopy craft and the kids wrote what they thought Snoopy was thankful for:

We did a lot of turkey activities including a class book where the kids wrote about where they would hide if they were a turkey:

They also illustrated a book to show where a turkey would hide in different settings. They are so creative!

(This one made me laugh for like 20 minutes!) 

And finally, we talked a lot about family traditions and learned more about the history of the First Thanksgiving. To end our unit, we made a class book about what we learned:

This time of year always reminds me of how much I have to be thankful for including my wonderful students. One of my sweet boys made this for me during free centers time and left it on my desk:

(I'll make your day brighter!)

They do make my days brighter! I don't know how many times I've gone to work in a horrible mood only to be laughing by 9:00 because my hilarious and sweet kiddos! 

And of course, I'm also thankful for my wonderful family who I got to be with over Thanksgiving break. Here they are….isn't my granddad precious? He's 94!!

That's my "little" brother in the back next to his fiancee! They are getting married in May and I CANNOT wait! :) 

Hope you enjoyed my post! If you liked these activities, make sure to click on the picture below to check out my unit!