Thanksgiving has come and gone...

...and I am finally posting about it! Gosh I am behind! I swear we actually did these activities before Thanksgiving...I am just finally getting around to sharing them (maybe put them in your save bank for next year! ;))

We started off last week by reading "Turkey Trouble" by Wendy Silvano. Then we created some fab "turkeys in disguise". You can get the template for this activity by clicking here. Thank you for sharing Tori!

I know this is a project that most send home for students to work on with their families. However, as many of my students do not have the resources to complete them at home, I always do them in class. I ask them to bring little items if they can contribute and then I bust out my craft supplies! It is quite hilarious to see what the students come up with on their own anyway! Here are a few samplings:

A "fireman"

A "gift" and a "poodle"

Yea...see those beans along side the poodle...are you thinking the same as I was. The poodle did her business....you would be incorrect. I was informed that they are eggs lol...apparently we need to review the whole mammal thing!

A "rainbow and a "dinosaur"

Also please note the "Nemo" at the bottom of the page. When I asked this student why he was adding a fish he informed me because his face looks frightened and dinosaurs are scary. The things kids think of!

We also did an activity in Spanish last week to reflect on what we are thankful for. I only had time to snag one photo as we were scrambling to get it done at the end of the day....but he is our "Doy gracias..." mobile we created as a decoration for our homes!

If you would like a copy of the template for this (for next year...or if you get in the "thankful" spirit at another point throughout the year) you can grab it by clicking on the templates below. I just precut and hole punched the construction paper for my students to glue their work to in creating the mobile! This saved some serious time!

We also took the opportunity to make some comparisons between past and present last week. Here is a quick venn diagram we created as a class after reading the book "If You Lived in Colonial Times..." While reading, I gave the kiddos post-its, one labeled S for Same and one D for Different and as I read I asked them to jot down anything they heard in the text that was the similar or different to our present day lives. Here are some of the things they came up with:

We are finishing up past and present this week before embarking on our "Celebrations Around the World" unit the first week of December!