We celebrate Thanksgiving in October in Canada. So this weekend we will be enjoying some yummy pumpkin pie. We made these funky turkeys yesterday! The children had a great time creating them and seemed very happy to take them home. Most of them insisted on carrying out their turkeys in their hands instead of putting them in their backpacks.
It is a fun project because you basically just set out the materials, do a quick little demo and then let them go. They all seem to turn out and each seems to have its own unique personality! You need one big pine cone for each child, about three or four leaves, a pompom, two googly eyes, a little piece of red pipe-cleaner for the wattle, and Tacky glue. I found most of this stuff at the local craft store. I found most of it on special!
The children choose a pine cone, test out where they want to put the leaves, and then dab the end of the leaves into the Tacky glue and place them in the spaces they chose to put them on the pine cone. I put out toothpicks to let them put the little dabs of glue on for the eyes and wattle.
They dip the pompom in the glue and place it where they want it to go.
We also made these cute Turkey fridge magnets with our buddy class last week!
Just a little craft spoon, a silk leaf, two googly eyes, a piece of pipe cleaner for the wattle, and a small piece of magnetic tape. You can tell that it's a turkey, right? My students loved them!
We also made little books about fall. The children did an awesome job matching the picture to the words. I introduced the sentence strips and pictures on the pocket chart and had the children match the correct sentence strip to the picture using the reading strategies we have introduced thus far. They love having the chance to match the correct strip to the picture and put it in the pocket.
Then I gave them a package of the pictures and the corresponding sentence in a booklet format. They just had to cut our the pictures and match them to the correct sentence and glue it down. It works really well if you match the pictures to the sentences first and then cut out the pages. They did a great job using their strategies to figure out which picture went with which sentence.
Then they cut on the pages and compiled them to make a little booklet! I gave them a construction paper cover and gave them some of the peel and stick fall stickers you can find at the craft store to decorate the cover! This was a HUGE hit!
Here are a few samples!
Then they had to color a few of pages to make the sentences true! Some of the students opted to color all the pages!
If you want to try this quick project you can find all the pages you need including the pocket chart strips and pictures in my Thanksgiving Fun package at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
The instructions for the pine cone turkey are also included. There are also some fun activities for math in the package as well!
This is a sample of the math courting activity.
Hope you have a great Thanksgiving whenever you have it!
