15 Easy and Fun Thanksgiving Activities for Kindergarten
Thanksgiving Activities for Kindergarten
It’s officially the month of November, which means one thing – Thanksgiving is just around the corner! So you may be thinking about some fun kindergarten Thanksgiving activities if you’re like me. Don’t worry! I’ve got you covered!
In this blog post, I’ll share some of my favorite Thanksgiving games and classroom activities. These activities are not only so much fun and educational, and, most importantly, they keep the kiddos entertained!
Like most kindergarten teachers, you’re looking for fun, engaging, skill-based activities and even a few fantastic fun Thanksgiving crafts! I have some great, easy-to-prep, learning activities just for Thanksgiving themed week!
When it comes to Thanksgiving lesson plans, I like to mix it up: Reading skills activities, along with some fine motor skills activities, too.
The students I work with consistently love these Thanksgiving activities, including a few adorable turkey crafts. They are also the best way to keep those little hands on task this time of year!
Thanksgiving Reading and Book Activities
One of the most effective Thanksgiving reading activities that you can use in the fall is from our Engaging Readers.
This reading comprehension unit is all planned for you… WHEW! Each book comes with detailed lesson plans, anchor charts, reading strategy book questions, vocabulary lessons, crafts, assessments and more.
If you would like to know more about how to teach an interactive read aloud lesson for a kindergarten class, here’s what I do. I also explain the research on why we structure our read-aloud lessons the way we do.
1. Turkey Trouble Book Activities
This book is hilarious. Turkey does not want to become the main meal on Thanksgiving, so he disguises himself.
Kindergarteners and first graders will giggle all the way through this book!
Turkey Trouble Lesson Plans
For this book, we focus on the following comprehension strategies:
- Making Predictions
- Retelling with Text Details
- Schema Building (We have an original non-fiction book that is All About Turkeys)
- Informational Text Writing
- Vocabulary Study: omnivores, grumbled
Here is a peek at the sequencing activities that are part of the unit. There are printable cards that you can use in a pocket chart or this digital version that is in a PowerPoint slide.
Sequencing a story is a great way to improve oral language in your kindergarten students. This visual support is a perfect way to prompt students should they get stuck as they practice retelling the story to their partner.
Students love the turkey craft from this unit. Simply copy the turkey feathers on different colored paper. Then add a glue stick and googly eyes!
You can read more about these Turkey Trouble read aloud lesson plans by clicking:
2. A Turkey for Thanksgiving Book Activities
Another favorite book to read around Thanksgiving time is A Turkey for Thanksgiving.
Turkey tries to hide from the crowd. As it turns out, he is the guest at the Thanksgiving dinner, not the main course.
As with the book above, students have 5 days of reading comprehension and discussion with this Thanksgiving unit.
Here is a look at the schema anchor chart.
You can read more about this Thanksgiving book and activities in this blog post:
If you would like a copy of the Turkey for Thanksgiving Activities you can find them on TPT:
3. Turkey Stem Activity
We love STEM Activities!
Students are asked to create a chair for the turkey from a list of provided materials.
This Thanksgiving STEM Activity can be found by clicking here:
4. How to Catch a Turkey Activities
This book unit is one that we created when schools had to teach remotely. We plan to add more to it, but for now, you will find text-dependent questions with printable and digital response pages.
Here is a look at the student story sequencing cards that come with the unit.
This Thanksgiving reading unit can be found in this link:
Thanksgiving Activities for Kindergarten Center Ideas
Here are a few Thanksgiving season center ideas you can use in your own kindergarten classroom.
I will add links to the photographs below if you want to find out where to find these.
5. Turkey Numeral Handwriting Practice
With this math activity, students will start with at the printed turkey and then follow the path of motion to form the numeral.
6. Turkey Making 10 Math Center
Students take these math task cards and figure out how many more they need in order to make 10. Then students add their answers to the response page.
7. Thankful Syllables Literacy Center
Students will say the word, then color a pie for each syllable. Then the kindergartener will write the word.
8. Thanksgiving Sentences Literacy Center
Students will match the pictures with the sentences. Then they will write the sentences.
9. November Writing Center
The writing center has always been a classroom favorite of mine and kindergarten classrooms everywhere. I love how you can teach this center early in the year, then swap out the cards and response pages to keep it interesting.
For November, this writing center includes these themes:
This Fall Writing Center for November Includes 5 themes. Each theme has 12 vocabulary cards. Here are the themes that are included:
- Fall Activities (shown above)
- Food
- Football
- Then and Now
- Veteran’s Day
- Remembrance Day (this is for our teacher friends who are outside the United States.
Additionally, each set of cards has 6 different types of writing… Whew! It is a big one. You can find it by clicking:
Thanksgiving Poems for Kindergarten
I actually have two different Thanksgiving-themed poems. I’ll add a link where you can find this resource to the pictures below. Each poem is set to a familiar tune, so we sing our way through these fun activities.
10. Five Fat Turkeys Poem
We love the interactive components of the poem/song. Each time we repeated this poem, we removed a turkey from the tree. YES! Wild turkeys can fly for short distances.
11. Family Feast Poem
Every year, I promise I will not overeat at Thanksgiving. Every year I do! Can’t stop, won’t stop!
Students also add the poem to their poetry notebooks and have an emergent reader to go along with the poem. Students collect those little books to read again and again!
Learn more about how I use poetry in the classroom by reading this blog post:
12. Thanksgiving Bump Math Game
We love the game of Bump! Once students learn the game, we can swap the skills or images and it is a “brand new game.” This activity is in my Thanksgiving Math Work Station Unit, which has 8 different math activities.
This game is played with 2 students. Each student has a different colored cube to use as a game piece. [Yum! Pumpkin pie! Again with the food!]
13. Thanksgiving Stamping Activities
Each stamping unit has four different themes each month. These printable activities are super low prep. Just print! Can you tell that I had food on my mind.. again?
Stamping activities are a fun way to practice numerous skills. When using the math center pages, some students might be counting each item, while others might be subitizing while strengthening their number sense.
Additionally, there are also activities for your literacy centers as well.
Thanksgiving Sentence Work
14. Thanksgiving Sentence Pocket Chart Center
The sentence pocket chart center is one that I had in my classroom all year long! Students loved it. As the year progresses, you can challenge your students with more complex sentences. There is also a response page where the students will write the sentence and draw a picture to match.
14. Thanksgiving Morning Work
Each morning, we used these Read, Trace, Glue, and Draw activities. My students love them. You may want to read the sentence to students.
Engaging Thanksgiving Practice Activities
15. Thanksgiving Hide and Seek
This is an activity that can be used as a center activity if you wish, but we used as a whole group activity.
We would leave these cards in a spare pocket. I would hide a surprise card behind a few of the turkeys. Then students would come up, read the sight words, then lift it to see if there was a surprise behind it.
Students have to keep track of the guesses on their individual response page.
After completing this together, I would rehide the special cards. Then when we found ourselves with some spare time, we would just read the card (no additional recording sheet.)
Student engagement is really high on this one! Look at that fluency practice!
You can find this resource by clicking here:
Well, those are some of my favorite Thanksgiving Activities. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Deedee Wills
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
Hi, I'm DeedeE.
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
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6 Responses
I can’t wait to use this for Thanksgiving.
What is that beautiful writing resource they are writing on top of! Is there pictures elsewhere of this!? looks like its teal with all sorts of resources for the student to use?
I read Turkey Trouble to my Kinders every year. These activities are wonderful. Can I get all of these activities together somewhere? Please let me know where I can find these resources/activities.
Thank you for sharing your great ideas!
Linda
Yes! You can get all of the reading response activities in this bundle:Reading Comprehension: Engaging Readers: YEAR LONG BUNDLE NO PREP
You can get all of the Science, Math, and More (which have the STEM activities and center activities in this bundle: Science, Math, & More YEAR LONG BUNDLE
I read Turkey Trouble to my class every year before Thanksgiving! Thank you for giving me some great ideas to use with this book to help make learning fun for my students!
Yay!! You are so welcome!