What sort of hands on activities are you doing for Thanksgiving? I want to make literacy centers and want to keep my pre kinders busy. I am looking for activities from the alphabet to math, matching games, bingo, etc. Do you have websites to share?
I think I said it on another post but I'll say it again. We are using some of the thanksgiving curriculum that we found on universalpreschool.com. I really wanted to teach our children about Native Americans but was afraid of making it to commercial. So far we have made totem poles and used real needles to string beads and indian corn. We also made cornbread. Tomorrow we are going to make button blankets. Next week we will make paint using berries and vinegar. We are also going to use big boxes and make a big totem pole. The children are loving this unit!
TeacherR I wanted to let you know that at the sanctioned Native American Culture event this weekend the group AISES (I think that is right) was having the children make "modern petroglyphs" by using Sharpies to draw on smooth river rocks (there are no shortage of these here) there was a small talk about how the rocks are a mystery even today and that perhaps they told important info like what one could hunt in the area or what was important about an area. The children were asked what was important to them.....what do they want to remember....and then allowed to draw it on the rock. No stipulations about needing to recreate images one could find there-although that was available in books in the area....just what their hearts needed to remember. The children were lined up for this activity. My children also love the Native American unit.
I show the kids some Indian picture codes. They love decorating with "real" Indian art. I love the rock idea, and think this would work well together.
Yep, Blue that is exactly what they were doing at the event. The leaders were just conversationally pointing out the pictures and talking about how the pictures were to mark things that were important...and how maybe (like locally) the idea that the orgional person was to share has been lost...so that opened the idea of what the child thought it might have been marking. Then they got to mark their rock.....super popular!
We make pumpkin pies with the children one afternoon and then sit together the next day and have a "feast" of pie with whipped cream. While we're eating, we talk about all of the things for which we're thankful. It's a lovely way to end school before the break.
My friend has lady pilgrim outfit that she wears while reading a Thanksgiving story. Patterns available in the fabric stores or Halloween clearance.
My kids ahve been very into a unit on pouter space so we haven't done very much about Thanksgiving this year. We've read books and talked about what we're thankful for. Today we'll make corn bread and take it to share with the 6,7,8 grade class. I have whipping cream in a jar. We'll shake it to make butter. I have baked apples. We'll have a little Thanksgiving Feast. I'll read a book and we'll talk about what we're most thankful for. While the muffins bake we'll make turkeys by tracing our hands and gluing feather on for tails.
