Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and an opportunity to give thanks for the blessings in their lives.  I personally ate waaaay too much food, but cherished every minute I had with my family and made sure to tell each one of them how much I love them and appreciate them.

Since you've had a day to digest your Thanksgiving dinner and maybe burn some of it off with some Black Friday shopping,  I thought now would be an appropriate time to share all of the hard work the kids put into our "Week of Thanksgiving" at school.

We began our week reading and assembling our "First Thanksgiving Book."  This book told the story of the first Thanksgiving and answered many questions the kids had about the holiday - such as What is Thanksgiving? and Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?  I had the kids highlight all of our sight words in the story to emphasize just how important those words are.  They were surprised when I told them they were reading a book on a second to third grade level - even though  they don't yet have the reading skills to decode the entire book, they were able to read many of the words because they are sight words that we have practiced in class.

After reading about the first Thanksgiving, we worked on our ability to retell the story.  We made story bracelets that retold the story with different colored beads.  Each colored bead represented a detail from the story and served as a reminder of what happened next.  We read a Thanksgiving poem that was sent home so that the kids could retell the story of Thanksgiving to their families.  I hope they shared! :)

We discussed what it meant to be thankful and made a list to display in our room.  It's always amusing to see what is important to a kindergartener. 

We turned our list into individual writings, but needed a little gobble gobble to go along with it.  We created turkeys from a coffee filter -  and man was it messy.  We colored the filters with markers and as I sprayed each one with water, we watched the colors bleed together and create a tie dye effect.  The kids loved it.  I apologize for any dingy, brown fingers - just know they weren't the only ones who went home with them.

We also learned interesting facts about turkeys.  Did you know a turkey has 157 bones?  Or that turkeys have great hearing, but no ears?  Did you know gobbling turkeys can be heard a mile away?  Or that turkey eggs are light tan with brown specks?  Well...now you do.

 We put together a story sequence of the Mayflower and it's voyage to America...

For memory's sake, the kids made handprint art for each of their families with a Thanksgiving poem attached.  They also made Thanksgiving placemats. I hope these treasures will be kept safe so that the kids will have something to look back on later in life.

But the most exciting part of our week was our preparation for our own Thanksgiving feast.  The kindergarteners took on the role of the Native Americans while the first grade classes took on the role as the Pilgrims.  We designed our own tribal headbands and feasted on Thanksgiving staples such as turkey and corn (ok - more like turkey sandwiches and popcorn, but that counts, right?).  The kids LOVED the time shared together and that was the most important part.

 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!  SEE YOU MONDAY!