Thanksgiving in Kindergarten Archives

Disguise A Turkey Digital Thanksgiving Activity

November 12, 2021 teachersbrain Teacher's Pay Teachers, Thanksgiving in Kindergarten

November is such a great time of year. Turkeys everywhere, delicious food, and the start of Christmas decor!

As a teacher, it is especially fun because you get to do lots of turkey and Thanksgiving-themed activities with the kiddos.

Students love making pilgrim hats, completing this Thanksgiving escape room, creating turkey headbands, and even performing a Thanksgiving play!

These are all amazing for increasing student engagement throughout November, but one of my favorite activities was always the Disguise a Turkey activity.

Every year, I would have students disguise a naked turkey so it wouldn’t get eaten on Thanksgiving Day. It’s so fun! Students are sent home with the turkey printable and work with their families to come up with creative disguises. We got some cool disguised turkeys! Then students would practice their creative writing skills by writing about them.

It was a hit! But then the pandemic hit, and I was so sad that students wouldn’t be able to do this project. However, I found a way to use Google Slides to provide a digital version with a printables so students would never have to miss out on this fun activity.

So now students can disguise their turkey while distance learning!

This Thanksgiving activity is available on Google Slides

These interactive, editable slides make it easy to have students copy and paste movable parts to DISGUISE a TURKEY!

After coming up with the perfect disguise, they get to write a narrative opinion story about their turkey.

I love this activity because it is not only educational, but it allows students to engage in some creative holiday fun. They’ll get 9 backgrounds to choose from, 6 slides with movable parts, 5 slides for students to brainstorm, organize thoughts, and write a story about their disguised turkey, and black and white slides for students to digitally or handwrite stories.

You can even add some animation and music to it while in Present mode! Afterward, you can print these out to decorate your classroom or make a slideshow so everyone can see it virtually.

Check out the video tutorial here!

Thanksgiving Escape Rooms For Kids

October 23, 2020 teachersbrain education, Thanksgiving in Kindergarten

As we approach the holiday season, your students might be growing weary of the usual classroom activities. Are you detecting a little bit of restlessness when you assign a reading comprehension passage? Don’t worry, I have the perfect activity to inject some life into your reading practice- escape rooms!

Students will have a blast using their reading skills to solve the puzzles and escape the room. Trust me, it will be one of the most memorable activities of the year!

There is even a Thanksgiving Escape Room perfect for the fall- The Thanksgiving Mystery.

To successfully complete this activity, students have to “break the box” to “escape the room”. As they try to solve the mystery, they will practice their reading skills as well as using teamwork and critical thinking skills.

Your students will be having so much fun trying to escape, they might not even notice that they are developing higher level comprehension skills. Application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are all necessary to open the box. Rather than using simple worksheets, you will be letting your students develop their higher order thinking skills while having fun!

This Thanksgiving Mystery video will introduce the activity to your students and hook them in.

The Thanksgiving Escape the Room resource includes all the steps you need to engage your students in the Thanksgiving Mystery. After a little bit of preparation following the easy checklist, you’ll be ready to guide your students through their adventure.

The escape room can be used if your children are in the classroom, or easily adapted for at home learners. Your kids are going to have a blast exploring the different steps including a corn maze!

For more Thanksgiving fun, check out my Thanksgiving Turkey Run Digital Escape Room.

This activity would be perfect for the days leading up to Thanksgiving break. Have you used escape rooms in your classroom yet? Tell me in the comments!

thanksgiving escape room

Teaching Thanksgiving to Kindergarten

November 13, 2018 teachersbrain Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips, Thanksgiving in Kindergarten

Pilgrims and Thanksgiving

I love teaching in November! I know that I have so much to be thankful for this time of year! Young students should learn about Thanksgiving by focusing on being thankful, spending time with family, the First Thanksgiving, and the Mayflower Voyage. You can even teach about teamwork of how the pilgrims had to work together to build a common house. Every year I would perform a Thankful Festival for parents. The performance focuses on being thankful, family and the feast. I use music by Jack Hartmann. He is my favorite children’s musical artist! We invite the families in to see us sing songs, and eat together. Sometimes we do traditional food, but I’ve done breakfast instead, if the timing of the show was early in the morning.

I use this time of year as an opportunity to talk about family traditions, sharing, cooking together, and teaching where food comes from. Of course there is always the traditional turkey hand print that goes home every year and other turkey crafts. I like to invite guest readers during this time too. The holidays can make students a little excited, so a fresh new voice reading a book usually is just what the Dr. ordered to keep their attention.

Turkey in Disguise Family Project

By far my favorite home project all year is Operation Disguise Turkey! We send a letter home with a turkey printable for the family to help disguise the turkey so it is not on the table for Thanksgiving. Students also have to write a few sentences about the disguise. The families are always creative! My son made his into a dog. My daughter made hers into a vampire. Yes, a vampire. I guess she still had Halloween on her mind. The projects make a great conversational piece during the celebration with the family.

Kindergarten Disguised Turkey — My Daughter’s Disguised Turkey

Great Turkey Stories

I have two favorite turkey stories I read during Thanksgiving. Turkey Trouble and A Plump and Perky Turkey. Students compare and contrast food, write about how to trick a turkey, summarize, practice comprehension, and learn new vocabulary words with these stories. If you have not read these adorable books, I suggest you buy the books or find it at your local library. They are my “Must Haves” for November.