With the holidays fast approaching, now is the perfect time to start planning Thanksgiving activities for your kindergarten or 1st grade class. Keep your students engaged in learning while adding some turkeys and pumpkin pie into the mix! Read on for some fun and creative Thanksgiving activities your students will love.
THANKSGIVING BOOKS
With themes of family, gratitude, fall and of course… turkeys, Thanksgiving read-alouds can give your class all the holiday feels! Reading to your students is an important opportunity to help develop vocabulary, background knowledge and comprehension.
The Thankful Book by Todd Parr. This book is filled with all the little, big and silly things we have to be thankful for at Thanksgiving and everyday.
Give Thanks for Each Day by Steve Metzger. Another book filled with examples of gratitude perfect for helping students think of things in their life they can be thankful for.
Thanks for Thanksgiving by Heather Patterson. This book has beautiful illustrations of a family celebrating Thanksgiving day. It makes a nice springboard for discussing family traditions on special days.
The Amazing Turkey Rescue by Steve Metzger. A fun story of turkeys saving the day and themselves from becoming Thanksgiving Dinner.
PLAY A THANKSGIVING GAME
Gobble! Gobble! Your students will love this pocket chart game. A fun interactive way to practice all sorts of math or literacy skills. The cards are editable so you can review sight words, numbers, letters or whatever skill you are working on right now! Place the cards in your pocket chart and hide the Thanksgiving surprise (turkey, pumpkin pie & more) behind one card. Students pick a card and if they identify the word, number or letter correctly, they can peek behind to see if they found the surprise. This is a simple game but your students will love it! It works as a whole group, small group or center activity. BONUS! This set can be used for Halloween and fall too.
DO A THANKSGVING PUZZLE
This puzzle makes me hungry for Thanksgiving dinner and all the fixings! This is just one of the 12 number puzzles included in the Thanksgiving number puzzles set. Use this set for practice counting back from 20 or edit the numbers to match what your students are working on right now! It takes a steady hand to line up all those number strips and your students will get some fine motor work along with their counting. A fun addition to your math centers before Thanksgiving.
MAKE A TURKEY CRAFT
Can you really celebrate Thanksgiving in the classroom without making a turkey craft? Try out this fun cut and paste turkey that also doubles as color word practice. This is part of a larger set with pocket chart sentences and printables too! Or check out this blog post for instructions and templates to make a Shape Turkey!
THANKSGIVING MATH MATCHES
Working on numbers sense and numbers to 12? This set of matching math cards will be a fun addition to your math centers this Thanksgiving. Download them for Free below!
I hope you found some Thanksgiving Activities you can use in your classroom.
Need some ideas for Halloween Activities too? Read more HERE.
