Let’s Talk Turkey

UPDATE 11/2/2020: Here is a link to over 45 Thanksgiving activities you can use in your classroom.

I’ve gathered a few more ideas this year to add to my Cornucopia of Creative and Critical Thinking Activities for Thanksgiving, which I published a couple of years ago.

• First, I want to go back to a suggestion in my Cornucopia post, which was, “What are you Thankful For? Ask it Better.” I’ve been using different prompts from this article with each grade level.  For example, my 5th graders brainstormed what they are thankful for that they cannot see.  My 2nd graders brainstormed what teachers might be thankful for, as you can see below.  I really like this twist on giving thanks.

• I found 10 Thanksgiving Writing Prompts Inspired by Children’s Literature on the “We are Teachers” blog the other day.  My favorite is, “What do you wish you could ‘hold still’ about the holidays?”
• “We are Teachers” also has a post called, 10 Fresh Thanksgiving Crafts with History, Math, and Writing Connections.  I was pretty thrilled to see that most of them were actually ideas I hadn’t seen before.  If you want a fast, fun way to practice cursive writing, take a look at the “Thankful for the People in my Life” activity.
• Make a Turkey is a nearly 10-minute tutorial from Hopscotch, one of my favorite programming apps, that might get your students prepared for December’s Hour of Code extravaganza.

What are teachers thankful for? You might not see it in the picture above, but one of the students wrote, “Other teachers.”  And that is very true.  Thank goodness for all of the awesome educators who are kind enough to share their resources on the web for those of us who aren’t quite as creative!