🦃🍁🥧 Thanksgiving
I hope you enjoy the Thanksgiving Unit Study Lesson Plan, here are some highlights:
My Thanksgiving Feast - Write Your Adventure
Thankful Tree and Verses
Rainbow Acorn Sight Words
Pumpkin Patch Sight Words
Acorn Number Bonds
Pumpkin Less Than or Greater Than
Fall Felt Garland
Turkey Sculptures
Cranberry Marble Run
Cranberry STEM Structures
Thanksgiving Dinner Sensory Play
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Enjoy! Tiff
Thanksgiving 🦃🍁🥧
My Thanksgiving Feast
I got so much positive feedback from the Haunted House guided writing activity I created, that I had to do one for Thanksgiving!
Students will create their very own My Thanksgiving Feast Lift-the-Flap Book with this fun holiday themed guided writing craft. Students will get to choose every part of their Thanksgiving feast from side dishes to dessert. (Includes a vegetarian/vegan option for the main dish.) For each page, students can choose their own adjective, noun, and action. Or use the options as inspiration and create your own one-of-a-kind Thanksgiving story.
Make this into a Thanksgiving Literacy Center for continued use. Just color and laminate the story pages, then cut out each of the three story options per page. Use velcro dots for the lift-the-flap options and a dry erase marker to write with.
Thankful Tree and Verses
Take time to be grateful this Thanksgiving season with this festive Thankful Tree Craft and Memory Verse pages!
First, make a beautiful art display with the Lift-the-Flap Acorns and Leaves. Attach them to the printable tree provided or use twine to tie them on a garland or on a physical tree branch.
Then encourage your students to learn the word of God with these Thanksgiving Memory Verse Pages. Includes 5 different verses on being thankful, with two designs each. One is a handwriting focused page for older kids and the other is a coloring page for little ones.
English Language Arts - Sight Words Focus
Rainbow Acorn Sight Words
Practice high-frequency words with this interactive acorn themed sight word pack that is perfect for Thanksgiving
First, practice sight word recognition with these Acorn Sight Word Flash Cards. Use the flash cards as part of the bingo game, a literacy center or include in a sensory bin.
Play with the sight words on the Tree Playmat and build a tree of sight words. Or use the Squirrel Play Mat to see how many acorns the squirrel can collect.
Then, assess student's progress with Acorn Bingo. Have one student read the Flash Cards to call out the words. Students can use actual acorns on the colored version to mark the words or use the black and white version and color in the acorns as they are called. Includes 16 different cards, 8 for the first 50 words and 8 for the second 50.
Also included is a tracking sheet. Have your students color in the star for each word that they know.
Pumpkin Patch Sight Words
Make teaching sight words as easy as picking a pumpkin. First, practice sight word recognition with these fun Pumpkin Patch Dab A Dot pages. Once your students are familiar with the words, have them practice building the words with the Pumpkin Patch Play Mat, Pumpkin Letters and Pumpkin Flash Cards. Then, assess and track your student's progress with the Pumpkin Flash Cards and tracking sheet.
If you would rather work on CVC words, check out my Pumpkin CVC Word Builder.
Reading Lessons
There are only two resources I like to make sure I include on each week’s lesson plan, Prodigies Music (below) and Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This book has thousands of 5 star reviews on Amazon for a reason. It’s an effective, no-prep way to teach reading. We are 40 or so lessons in and I can already see a huge difference, my daughter actually sounds out the words instead of guessing.
The lessons are short (15-20min), easy to grasp and sequential. The entire lesson is scripted and color coded so it’s fool proof, just read the words in pink. It also is designed for kids that don’t know their alphabet or letter sounds yet, so you can start right away. Their claim is that after completing all 100 lessons your child will be able to read at a 2nd grade level!
Math - Number Relationships
Acorn Number Bonds
Help your students get to fluency with this Acorn themed number bonds pack. Practice combinations of 10, addition doubles, and teen number decomposition with these fun acorn themed activities. Includes number bond worksheets, counting mat and number pairs.
Pumpkin - Less Than or Greater Than
Explore number relationships with these fun interactive math activities as you teach greater than, less than & equal to; and combinations of 10.
Includes instructional pages, tiered worksheets that get harder as your students progress, math center clip cards, play-doh mats and story problem cards.
Art and Music
Fall Felt Garland
One of my favorite ways to get into the holiday spirit is to decorate. We have a ton of Christmas decorations, but hardly any Thanksgiving decor. So I really wanted to make some Thanksgiving decorations that were durable, but were also easy enough for my girls to make with minimal help.
I found these awesome felt leaves, but didn’t know what I would use them for. Then I happened to buy these 100% wool felt balls for another project and they matched perfectly.
First, my daughter designed the color pattern for the garland. Then she got to practice her sewing with a blunt needle. We had to use pliers to get the needle thorough the balls, but the leaves went on pretty easily. I tied a knot over each leaf to keep them in place. This was a great no-prep craft that we will be keeping for many years to come. To take this craft to the next level, add a note on each leaf with a reason why you are thankful!
Supplies: fishing line, needle, pliers, 100% wool felt balls, felt leaves
Turkey Sculptures
We loved this activity! This kept both my 2 year-old and 5 year-old busy for over an hour!
I looked high and low for brown Play-Doh and then realized, duh this is a great opportunity to learn about color mixing. So I just got one can of neon blue and one can of neon orange Play-Doh and we made our own brown Play-Doh . Note: the ratio of blue to orange is not 1:1, we used more orange.
I set-up the supplies for them ahead of time and they needed almost no instruction. My little one had a blast seeing her turkey come to life. After she made it the first time (in the first 5 minutes), she spent the next hour taking the feathers out and re-making her turkey.
Supplies: neon Play-Doh , googly eyes, yellow photo corners (cardstock would work great here, but I had these on hand), pipe cleaners, feathers, red cardstock.
Prodigies Music
Do…Re…Mi…
We love Prodigies! Prodigies Music is simply an incredible curriculum for teaching music. Ages 2-5 is the critical time to develop a life-long sense of pitch. Their curriculum is designed to develop a sense of pitch with easy to use desk bells that don’t require any tuning. They also teach piano, recorder and ukulele. Their subscription includes everything you can think of 450+ videos, worksheets, free bell mats, sheet music all color coded so it’s super easy to learn. If you don’t have an instrument they have a bunch of rhythm focused content that doesn’t require an instrument.
They have a free trial and discounts for annual memberships! Great deal! You can even check out some of their videos for free on YouTube.
Science
Cranberry Marble Run
This was our first time making our own marble run and it was so fun and easy!
I taped a tall piece of cardboard to the wall and gathered all the random recycled materials I’ve collected. Then we experimented by adding one piece at a time and testing it after each new addition. Ava predicted what would happen when she added a new piece to the structure, then got to see if she was right! She also practiced her problem solving skills and make adjustments when it wasn’t working right. We’ll definitely be making more marble runs soon!
Supplies: cardboard, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, sharpies, recycled bottles and containers, glue dots, cranberries.
Cranberry STEM Structures
By: Little Bins for Little Hands
I love building challenges because it helps show my daughter what is possible, but it also inspires creative open ended play ideas.
This was a great no-prep STEM activity that only needs two supplies. I was planning to build these on my own, but then I found these great FREE 2D and 3D shape cards to go with our activity!
Supplies: round toothpicks (that have a pointed end on each side), cranberries.
Sensory Play
Thanksgiving Dinner Sensory Play
My girls love to play kitchen, so this was an instant hit! They pretended to harvest the vegetables and fruit from the garden, then they cooked and enjoyed their meal. My oldest even made up a little play called “The Fall Harvest” that she acted out using the play food and rice.
Filler: jasmine rice
Supplies: felt pie, Japanese puzzle erasers, wooden food toys, felt food toys, DIY felted acorns (100% wool felt balls, acorn tops), stacking cups, wooden scoops, wooden letters.
Fall Harvest Sensory Bin
My favorite part about this bin is the smell. There was a slight vinegar smell after dyeing the popcorn, so I added some Harvest Spice Essential Oils. And now, I can’t help but smile when I open the bin.
The dyed popcorn has been a great filler, we’ve used it for a ton of different themes. At first I kept it separated to use in my Corn Sensory Bin, but I love all the colors mixed together. I added some assorted pumpkins for my girls to harvest and some fun wood shapes I found in the Target dollar spot.
Filler: dyed popcorn kernels
Supplies: Spice Essential Oils, plastic pumpkins, recycled mochi ice cream container, stacking cups, wooden scoops, wooden grateful & thankful, wooden leaves.
Physical Education
Turkey Hokey Pokey
By: The Kiboomers
Start off Thanksgiving week with this fun animated turkey video. I love starting each day with a fun video, my girls are really into music and this really helps them get ready for the school day.
Gobble Gobble Turkey Wobble
By: Koo Koo Kangaroo
Sing and dance along with Koo Koo Kangaroo to this fun turkey themed dance video. Learn the choreography and perform for your family at Thanksgiving dinner!
Book List
Books We Love!
- Celebrate the First Thanksgiving - Elaine Landau
- Thanksgiving Is… - Gail Gibbons
- How To Catch a Turkey - Adam Wallace
- The Berenstain Bears - Give Thanks
- Pete The Cat - the First Thanksgiving
- Thanksgiving in the Woods - Phyllis Alsdorf (My current favorite!)
Don’t have the budget or space to get more books? The library has been pretty great for us so far, but they are sometimes out of the more popular books. One place that you can always count on to find great books is Epic Books! Try Epic Basic for FREE! You can find awesome read to me books for free, Unlimited plan includes access to 40,000+ books!
Know of any other awesome Thanksgiving themed resources? Please comment below!
Do you know anyone else that would enjoy these free weekly lesson plans? Get them on the list!
