Thanksgiving Books and Projects

This week we will continue to read our thematic book "I know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Pie". In addition, we are also reading two other books that are also songs you might be familiar with.

First we have been reading/singing "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims". This book talks about the daily life of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. Through the pictures you see similarities and differences of their daily lives and finally there big celebration!

We are also singing/reading the book "Over the River, A Turkey Tale". This book follows the traditional song melody but follows a unique family to their celebration of Thanksgiving day.

Today, each student made a Cornucopia. Do not be surprised if your student comes home saying this big word! First we ripped brown paper and placed it inside a pre-drawn design. The students than colored and cut out the basket face. Lastly, they cut out delicious foods they could enjoy.

The Wild Turkey

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about turkeys. We started off by making several art projects that featured turkeys.
For this project, we cut out different shapes. It was a great way to practice our cutting skills.

Another project we created involved snipping "feathers" to go on a turkey.

Here we used our hand prints to decorate a turkey. These turkeys are hanging out with the people we made week 1!

After we were familiar with the idea of a turkey, we read a teacher made book about turkeys. Miss Deb even put it together using Turkey shapes!

Last week, we created a pictorial chart about the Wild Turkey. On Wednesday we created a pictorial chart about the Wild Turkey. We have been talking about it everyday since! Here is a picture of the completed chart.

We talked about the physical characteristics of a Wild Turkey. The snood is a piece of flesh that hangs over the turkeys beak. We hold our fingers over our nose as we practice saying"snood". The wattle hangs down under the Turkey's beak. We wiggle our fingers our own chin as we say "wattle". The Wild Turkey has fan like feathers. We hold up a fist and make a fan with our other fingers at the back as we say "fan like feathers" to help us remember.

We learned some interesting facts about the Wild Turkey. They have a 5 ft. wing span. We held our arms out to remember this.

The turkey has a varied diet. We learned that diet refers to what an animal eats. Some of the things a Wild Turkey eats are the same as we eat and somethings a human would not eat!

We learned that the Wild Turkey lives in the forest of North America. Over the next few weeks we will start a theme about forest animals so expect to hear a lot more about the forest!

We learned that the Wild Turkey is Oviparous, which means it is born from an egg. Humans are not Oviparous. When we say Oviparous, we hold our hands in the shape of an oval to remind us of eggs.

After we learned about turkeys, one of our rotational activities was to read and color the mini book "Turkey by the...". We had fun seeing all of the places on a farm a turkey could stand by! After completing the book, we did a fun worksheet where we practiced putting turkey's by the same object they stood next to in the book. Both of these came home last Thursday.
Sorry for the side ways pictures, but I could not get them to flip!

I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Pie

For the weeks of 11-16 and 11-23, we will be reading the storybook "I know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie" by Alison Jackson and illustrate by Judith Byron Schachner. It is about a little old lady who comes to a Thanksgiving dinner. Soon she has eaten all of the food! The next thing you know, she is an unexpected contribution to a Thanksgiving parade!

One of our activities for this story will be a large fun retelling apron. Each student will have the opportunity to be the old lady and we will have fun re-telling the story as we feed "her" the foods from the book!

The last few weeks we have been reading the story "Feast for Ten" by Catherine Falwell. The story is about a family who works together to prepare a large meal. The story counts up to ten to describe how the family is preparing the meal.

Since it is November, we have been talking about Pilgrims. Ms. Deb again made a fabulous board for our class. Each student decorated a Pilgrim or Native American body and we added a picture of the child to the finished product. We then used put each student into the story! If you happen to be at school, I would encourage you to find your student. They came out very cute!

We have a large "tree" outside our classroom and each season we change it some. We decorated pumpkins and leaves, which we added to it for fall.

When I think of Thanksgiving, I always think of Turkey's! We have made several different turkey projects, but this is one of my favorites. The turkeys are hanging out with our classroom buddies!