I love inspiring my students to write using seasonal themes and resources! I have several Thanksgiving activities that we use in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. We read lots of books and discussed its origins and the traditions surrounding it.
Several years ago, I scoured the internet to find a fun activity I could display in the hallway outside the classroom, but I couldn’t find anything just right. So, I created this…
This is a Thanksgiving turkey craft and writing mini-unit that your students will love completing in the weeks leading up to the Thanksgiving break!
Thanksgiving Activities for Writing
I began this mini-unit of Thanksgiving activities by teaching my second and third-grade students about the parts of the paragraph. Thanksgiving is in October here in Canada, so we aren’t often at the stage of writing too much at this point in the year.
Knowing I needed to keep it simple, I decided to adapt the OREO model I kept seeing on Pinterest to the needs of my students and came up with this:
I wanted my students to understand the basic paragraph structure, which includes an opening sentence, details, and a concluding sentence, and this fit the bill. They understood the analogy and totally ate it up in their writing. {Pun intended!}
Next, I made the learning goal and success criteria for our paragraphs explicitly clear using this anchor chart we kept posted in the classroom all year long:
Thanksgiving Picture Book to Inspire Writing
And now, the fun begins! To kick off our Thanksgiving activities, I read the book “The Great Turkey Race” to my kiddos.
They LOVED it!! My students thought the silly turkeys in the story, who were vying to become THE Thanksgiving turkey, were hilarious! The pictures are fun, and the story brought out all the giggles in my students, who thought the turkeys were ridiculous!
When the story was finished, we discussed as a class what it would be like to be a Thanksgiving turkey at this time of the year. What a fun chat that was! We brainstormed ideas and created an anchor chart. Their ideas were so cute!!
Were they ever inspired and ready to write after this!! Picture books always make excellent motivation for writing activities!
Thanksgiving Turkey Craft
Finally, we prepared our own Thanksgiving turkeys… really!! I took a photo of each student and had them developed before this lesson. We cut out their faces, and THEY became the turkeys! They had so much fun decorating these! Take a look at the final products! (I wish I could show their little faces!)
All the girls claimed it would be scary! The boys, however, had some very interesting approaches… Like this one, who said he would “tap dance out the door.”!
….or this one, who said he would “Throw a stink (stick) at his head to knock him out so I can run away.” Then concluded, “Being a Thanksgiving turkey would be great… until Thanksgiving.”!!
These made such a fun hallway display! Families loved them, and of course, the students get such a kick out of seeing their faces posted in the hall for everyone to see!
You can grab a copy of these Thanksgiving activities for use in your own classroom NOW!
More Fun Thanksgiving Picture Books
I absolutely love using picture books in my classroom, so I thought I’d share some other fun Thanksgiving and fall books in this post! Take a look at some favorites below:
With the Christmas season quickly approaching, you might also be interested in a fun gingerbread activity that also incorporates student images (if desired) and encourages creative writing in your classroom. You can read all about my Gingerbread Man activities here:
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