Fun Turkey Activities - freebies included!

One of my FAVORITE books to read during this time of year is A Turkey for Thanksgiving. It's so cute! Well, the last page lends itself REALLY well to talking about prepositions. So, I usually take the time after this book to make a quick anchor chart to demonstrate the importance of using the correct prepositions.

I realize my anchor chart is a little less than amazing, but it gets the job done, right!? haha

I taught them how to draw the turkey and then gave them an example of what they could write in their books.

Some of their ideas were SO creative!

 

After I checked their sentences, I had them go through and highlight their preposition they used. 

I was pretty impressed that they were using their Spelling Journal all on their own to look for words to spell. I seriously love these things. 

You can download the Turkey Preposition book HERE for free!

Another writing we did during our turkey theme was our Class Book for "If I Was a Turkey." I just love seeing their creativity!

And one of my favorite math activities we do is our Turkey Math!

I've done this with grades 1-3, and the skills on the feathers and the numbers on the turkey change each year, depending on the grade and where we are in math at that point... 

This year we are working on TEEN numbers and we did

Word form

tallies

base ten blocks

addition sentence (from the base ten blocks)

ten frames (I have a cool little ten frame stamp)

coins

Since the skills change each year, I hand write what I want them to do on the feathers each year, instead of copying them off.  Again, it's not the most amazing display, but it gets the job done and the turkeys always come out SO cute!

You can see the other versions I've done 

Here is another 1st grade version....

this is a 2nd grade version....

And of COURSE we did our Monthly Family Projects this month.. I just LOVE the Camo turkey!!

Next week, we have 2 days of school. We'll be doing our Turkey Trot within our Pod (I'll be back to show you more of that!) and we'll also be making our Turkey casserole bags. 

Head over to THIS post to check it out and download it for free!

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Thanksgiving and Turkey Weeks

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of turkeys, natives, and pilgrims!  We started with turkeys. We used {Deanna's November Guiding Readers pack}.

She has a nonfiction book within the pack, so after we did some fiction fun with Turkey Trouble, we used her Nonfiction book. I usually project her books on the screen, since I can...and the kids love looking at it nice and big.  We added to our "Schema, New Learning, and Misconceptions" chart as we read.  We always add so much to the "new learning" section....and every so often, we move things over to the misconception side. I really like this kind of chart in lieu of a KWL.

We also wrote our If I was a Turkey Class book. You can grab it for free {HERE}.

And we also did a turkey preposition book. I don't do actual lessons with prepositions in my class. We just periodically write books where they use prepositions in their writing. You can grab this freebie {HERE}.

We did our Turkey Numbers. I do the pumpkins in October and Turkeys in November.  I give them random numbers and the give me the word form, tally marks, addition, subtraction, ten frames and fact families.

THEN, it was on to Thanksgiving - Pilgrims, natives, and Mayflower fun!

We used our Scholastic News magazines to help us. I kept last year's set and we used this year's set....and we got all kinds of good information!

We did the Mayflower book. This is one of my favorite activities. The idea came from Cara {HERE}, and I've just tweaked it a little here and there each year.

One day was all about making crafts for our Thanksgiving performance. We needed to make our vests, hats, headbands.... so I had some rotations going. They did a directed drawing from {Doodle Bugs Teaching} in one rotation.

They came out so cute!!

Another rotation was turkey headbands.

And painting their native vests. I had some symbols on a page they could look at to use on their vests if they wanted.

and another station was making their placemats. These are so stinkin' cute - they come from Kelley at {Teacher Idea Factory}. 

Our classroom was all set for our families to come watch our performance!

For our performance, we used Reagan's Thanksgiving Freebie {HERE}.

After the performance, while the families were still hanging out, I decided to make the turkey cookies. Sure, why not, right!? haha

The next day, which was Tuesday...our last day before break. It was time to take down the November fun and start putting up the December fun!  I had another round of rotations going.... One was the pattern blocks activities from {Little Kinder Warriors}.  They really love these! I have them ready for a quick math center, or rotation filler for these kinds of days.

Another rotation was their Class tree decorating.  I got this idea from Kelley...again. I love her ideas. She's super creative! She gives step by step on how to make the class tree {HERE}.

I had a parent volunteer in the room and she helped with the glitter station. Oh my gosh. Glitter. It's a love/hate relationship haha

Then we put the trees together to make class trees - so stinkin' cute!!

So now my room is ready for when we get back and it's December. As much as I love October and November, I love December too!

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Turkey Preposition Book Freebie

This morning was a morning of learning in the Ross household.  (poor little teacher's kids...never safe! haha!)  Autumn made a book this morning - Where is My Turkey?  It's a book of prepositions.

Of course Brooklynn had to do it too... so her focus was coloring inside lines. If you knew what she USED to color like... like not even a month ago, oh boy.  We were worried. haha.  But school is doing wonders for her motor skills!  LOOK at how well she is staying inside those little lines on the barn! I'm super impressed.

Autumn is writing preposition sentences...over, under, beside, etc. 

The directed drawing comes from Jennifer over at {First Grade Blue Skies}.

And I'm really impressed with Autumn's spelling. She did it ALL herself. I don't believe in telling kids how to spell things...using their sounds.

In case you haven't noticed, we do a LOT of writing in my class. I really can't do ANY activity without having the kids do some kind of writing. I just think that writing goes with everything....Reading, Science, Social Studies. I don't teach grammar as a separate "content area." I teach it when I'm teaching them to write books...or stories...or paragraphs. 

If you want this book, click {HERE} to download it for FREE!

I also have a Penguin one {HERE}

and a Bumblebee one {HERE}

and a Spider one {HERE}

(All are freebies!)

I'm pretty sure I'll be making a Gingerbread one too. haha....and I think I'll have all the seasons covered - ha!

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Bubble Wrap Lint Roller Painting Turkey - freebie!

The other day, I tried a new kind of painting....

Bubble Wrap Painting!

I tried it out...and it turned out SO cute!!

I took some bubble wrap and put it on a lint roller, then rolled it in some paint, and painted the feather paper.  Here is how a few different ones came out...

I cut out the feathers after the papers dried, and glued the turkey together.

I love how it came out!  I took it home and had my girls try it out.  Autumn loved painting with a lint roller - haha!

She cut out all the other pieces while the feathers were drying and glued it all together. Then I got the brilliant idea of having there be a "writing activity" to go with it. So I quickly made one and told her to draw what she's thankful for.  Her response?? "I'm thankful for being loved!"  

Melt. My. Heart.   I mean seriously. Isn't that what all kids really want? To be loved??  She really does have such amazing insight into what really matters in life sometimes.

And because I'm so thankful for you guys, I would love to share these with you!

If you want the templates for the turkey, click {HERE}

And for the writing templates, you can grab them {HERE}.

And THANK YOU for all your comments! I really do love them!

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