Thanksgiving Time FREEBIE!

Hey Kinder Friends,

Well the Thanksgiving work is finally winding down and we still have part of next week to go! But we were happy to be able to stay inside today and have our Feast For 10! This was one of those rare times that I was actually able to participate and even listen from afar as the play based activity was taking place. As you can imagine our conversations were lively and it was interesting to see the different roles that the children tried out as they prepared for the feast. I almost wished that I had a checklist with me as the children were working because they covered a lot of the things that have been discussed in class from Language Arts to Math to Social Studies. It was a real joy to hear several retellings of Feast For 10, tons of how many, one more and two more and how different children celebrate at their own homes. Since we have incorporated more books into our home center, it has been interesting to see how they use them in this area. I asked why they were on the table and at their feast and the children told me that they needed them... Everyone that came to their feast just needed a book to read! I suppose they now know that reading is a part of our daily lives and reading has purpose... What teacher would not want that message to be loud and clear even in a home center?

One of my new favorites this year has been our I Am Thankful For... writing activity. We generated a simple list of the things we were thankful for and used the word and picture list to complete our feathers for our turkey headbands and a card we made for our families.

Like I said, this was super simple and it gave us a chance to talk about making lists as a writing choice and we were able to use this to help with making cards for our families. As we were talking and discussing Thanksgiving and our families the children continued to come up with things that they were thankful for and I will be excited to revise this list because we are getting better and a little more descriptive...

Our new list will include our new thinking after much discussion!

I Am Thankful For...

Warm coats when it rains.

Hot buttery cornbread.

Sleeping with my dog.

TV when it rains.

Teachers who help you learn.

Friends when you are sad.

And as I was driving home from school one day I thought about...time. Sometimes I think we are in such a hurry to teach it all that it is hard to allow for more...time. Time to let things simmer in our heads and time to rethink and revisit so that we get to a deeper understanding. During one of our last discussions I asked why many of us were thankful for trees. And with a little help of a sentence stem the list all of the sudden became a lot more interesting and descriptive.

I am thankful for ___ because ___.

I am thankful for trees because they give us apples.

I am thankful for trees because they give me shade.

Wow, what a difference time has made.

Considering we still go to school next week we have time to work on more writing with more detail. Sometimes, it just takes a little more, time. I will let you know how it goes!

And before our rainy day was over we had a chance to make a gift for our families. We made simple hand print turkeys. You would be surprised to know just how many descriptive words were used during this simple project. I heard squishy, wiggly, cold and wet to name a few! Maybe this follow up activity needs to be a shared writing activity and we could make a list of those words! Hmmm...

  

If you are in school next week and need a little Thanksgiving free fun just click on the images to get yours just to make your classroom Thanksgiving a Thanksgiving to remember...

To every teacher near and far...Happy Thanksgiving Kinder Friends!

The other printables come from the unit A Thanksgiving To Remember.