Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Thanksgiving 2014

Hi and happy almost Thanksgiving!  Today I want to share our Thanksgiving & Pilgrim Day fun with you!  It was a whirl-wind two days to get everything in for Pilgrim Day but we made it and had a blast!  So I'll start with the weeks leading up to Pilgrim Day:

To kick off our then/now unit, we took a field trip to a local place where I live and the kids got to see what it was like to cook back in the day.  They made biscuits and butter.  They also got to play a few old time games and see what it was like for a hunter hunt for food with a shooting demonstration. The trip was so awesome!




Once we got back, we began with some of Colleen Patton's awesome activities.  First up was a school SCOOT activity where the kids walked around in groups and had to discuss/guess what each object was.  Their responses were hilarious!  I took an audio of one child's thoughts.  After the SCOOT, we made an anchor chart together and I shared what the objects really were.  The kids were shocked at some!  We read A Country Schoolhouse and they were excited to see the objects that they just discussed inside of the book.





The next day we moved onto transportation.  We read a great little non-fiction book, Transportation Then and Now.  We ordered some cards together {again from Colleen} and then the kids made their own timelines.  We did a little writing together to go with it.


We had a bit more planned for then/now but we had a surprise snow day so some of it got skipped. Monday-Tuesday it was time for some fun Thanksgiving/Pilgrim activities!

We made the turkeys from my Thanksgiving Writing and Crafts Pack  on Monday.  It was a spur-of-the-moment kinda thing.  I had some 3rd grade girls that earned "Visit an old teacher" passes and I of course always want to have something elaborate planned for when kids come to visit me!  The turkeys turned out cute and the kids couldn't stop talking about them!!!








We played a few games in Reading groups from my Thanksgiving Centers pack.


We read A Turkey for Thanksgiving and completed a story map booklet on it from my "Differentiated Graphic Organizers" pack.  The story is so cute and the kids are always surprised at the end!




Some nice teacher baked her class turkey cupcakes and brought them in for a treat!



We made Caitlin Clabby's Pilgrim kids.  I love them every year!!


In between all of this fun, we were doing Pilgrim Days activities!  We started with a Pilgrim KWL.  I had read a few first Thanksgiving books in the weeks prior so the kids had some fresh background about Pilgrims.


I had purchased some hats and bonnets for kids and we wore them all day Monday and Tuesday! Sometimes we make them but we were short on time so I snagged them at a party store.  They were $10 for 12 hats/bonnets.  The kids were obsessed with them!





We use some good read alouds in this unit.  We spendone day on Sarah Morton's Day and one day on Samuel Eaton's Day.  These are both excellent reads for kids.  I usually para-phrase them because the language is confusing.  After we read both, we did a T-chart sort for pilgrim boys and pilgrim girls. We also did some writing...




Harry Kindergarten has a fun video called "They Were The Pilgrims."  The kids love it every year!  During the video, Mrs. Wheeler {might} have transformed into a Pilgrim lady!



We played some Pilgrim games, including tic-tac-toe aka naughts and crosses.


We practied our Fry's second 25 sight words on chalk boards today!  These boards were given to me for review from www.craftprojectideas.com  and they are AWESOME!  They're the perfect size for little hands.  The kids were so attentive during this!  Now that I've introduced them, I think I'll def. use them here and there for word work!  Good bye, dry erase slates!  Ha!!




We ended our days of fun by making butter!  This class must be strong and good shakers because one round around the circle and the butter was ready!  Everyone cheered when they tasted it!  The kids loved being able to take their own recipe cards home, too!




Pilgrim Days are always so much fun!  There's nothing better than authentic, hands-on learning!  To check out this pack for your classroom, click below.  Snag it now and save it for next Thanksgiving!

xo
Megan 

1 comments:

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Thanks for sharing all of your pictures and wonderful ideas. I really enjoyed them!

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