Thanksgiving Curriculum, Day Three

Well, today is Wednesday…but technically, it’s like Friday-which means it’s cooking day! Today’s cooking activity is pumpkin pie pudding-mmmmmm! For this activity, you will need enough vanilla pudding mix for all of your students, plus a can of pumpkin pie filling-NOT plain canned pumpkin. Oh, and milk to make the pudding, of course!

First of all, have your students help you make the pudding according to the recipe on the box. You can mix it in a bowl, or you can pour the ingredients into a zipper bag and have the students shake it and knead it. Help each student scoop a serving of pudding into a cup, then mix in a spoonful of the pumpkin pie mix. If you want, you can top the pudding with whipped cream (or whipped topping) and graham cracker crumbs.

For fine motor, have your students make a turkey….give them a turkey body cut-out (or let them cut the body out themselves). To make the body, just draw a bowling pin shape on brown paper. Have them cut out circles for eyes, two orange triangles for feet and one for a beak, and multicolored ovals for feathers, and glue them to the turkey body cut-out.

For math, have your students vote on their favorite Thanksgiving food-turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, or pumpkin pie (or whatever foods you would like to include). Graph these on your classroom graph.

Thanksgiving Curriculum, Day Two

So, can you tell that Thanksgiving is not my favorite curriculum? Sorry that you have to suffer for it! I can only take so much of the turkeys and the cornucopias and the Indian corn and the pies…..oh well. That’s okay. I’ll make up for it later!

Speaking of cornucopias…..that’s today’s art activity-a cornucopia collage. Give each student a cornucopia pattern to cut out, or a pre-cut cornucopia. Look through magazines to find pictures of fruits and vegetables; cut them out and glue them to your cornucopias.

Alternately, you could do a “thankful collage.” This is a family project and you will need to ask your parents to send in pictures of family members, pets, friends, favorite toys, etc. You could have each child glue these to a giant cornucopia or just make a poster saying, “Sally is thankful for….” You can go back later and label the pictures. At circle time, look at each student’s collage and talk about who/what they are thankful for and why.

For math, you can do patterns with feathers, Thanksgiving stickers or foam cut-outs, leaves, or candy corn/crème pumpkins (if licensing allows this). Your graphing activity will be tomorrow. For science, you could bring in a real turkey feather (if you can find one). For fine motor, you can use your pumpkin playdough again, or you could make “Indian Corn”-have the students cut out a corn cob shape from white construction paper then glue colored popcorn (lots of grocery stores sell it) to their cob. You could also use blue corn popcorn, which I have found in one of the natural food stores here.

Thanksgiving, Day One

It's Thanksgiving week! I have provided a fun book-5 Little Turkeys-for you to use in your classroom this week. I have written 3 days worth of lesson plans-our district only goes 2 days Thanksgiving week.

Today, your students will make turkeys. Give each student a turkey pattern to cut out, then give them colorful feathers to glue to the turkey. You can use your Boardmaker symbols to give your students a way to make their requests. Students who can't cut their own turkeys out can either have a precut turkey or use switch-operated scissors to cut their turkeys out.

Make turkey lacing cards out of a turkey notepad (I use these notepads).

Thanksgiving Lesson Plans

Please note that I have only given one week for Thanksgiving. I consider my food curriculum part of my Thanksgiving curriculum, and I never had much luck finding good Thanksgiving books. In our district we go to school for 2 days the week of Thanksgiving, but I have written the lesson plans for three days.

Book: 5 Little Turkeys

This is a book that I illustrated several years ago for use in my classroom. The author of the poem is unknown, as far as I am aware. At the preschool where I taught, the Assistive Technology Center staff scanned the book into the computer and created a book in Intellitools Classroom Suite that my students could "read" on the computer-something I copied with many, many books during my time there. It's a great way to expose children to the books with a level of independence that they can't usually have when viewing books. Of course, if you don't have one, another great way to help students read to themselves is the Bookworm.

Please forgive me that some of the letters were lost. I made this book on construction paper and it's a bit large for my scanner!