Giving Thanks and Thanksgiving!

The holidays are such a wonderful time of the year to say thanks and show our appreciation for others. My kids each picked a staff member from our building, wrote a letter to them, and expressed why they were thankful for them.  Then, they hand-delivered their letter. The children were so excited to deliver their turkey!  

Feel free to download the paper for FREE here and add on a FREE turkey topper from here to finish it off. 

For our Thanksgiving craft, we created placemats and laminated them so the kids could keep them for years to come. We did a direct drawing for how to draw a turkey first and then did it again except we did each of the drawings the correct color sheet of paper.

Not shown… but we added 2 wings by making 2 hearts sideways. Next, we did each of the parts on a sheet of construction paper and assembled it.  Since it's the season of giving, we also made another placemat for a local senior citizen home. They came out great.

 

This month, I wanted my students to learn about the Native Americans, Pilgrims, and the meaning of Thanksgiving.  I would always read Sarah Morton’s Day, Samuel Eaton’s Day, Tapenum’s Day, and The Mayflower by Kate Waters.  All of these are fabulous books, but I wanted to find something new.  I did!  It was GreatMinds123’s Early America - Pilgrims and Native Americans (informational text) from TpT.  Just thought I’d give a shout out and let her know my kids loved learning about the Wampanoag Tribe and the Pilgrims.  It was written in a very child friendly way and it helped to teach my kids about note-taking and using their notes to write a story.  The kids learned so much about the diet, shelter, and clothing of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Tribe.  It's also great to compare the two in many different ways. 

Even though it comes with paper, I LOVE to create paper for my kids, so I made some Pilgrim and Native American Paper which worked great for this project.  We added a cute cover to make it their own book.  Here are some pictures of their finished work.  If you like the paper, you can grab it here as part of my Writing Paper for November.  Other months are also available.

It was also a perfect time for Krista Wallden’s Thanksgiving Coloring Book.  Did I mention it’s a FREEBIE! The kids picked a picture and added to their book as a treat for working so hard. You can grab it here!

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy the holidays!