Thanksgiving... in Review

I start out November by teaching my little ones about the Pilgrims and their motivation to cross the Atlantic. They made little Pilgrims in my art center and displayed them on the Mayflower.

As we follow the Pilgrims to America, I introduce them to the American Indians. I have SO many activities. I first display symbols that they will copy onto various projects throughout the week.

Here is a student is designing his "Indian rug." It also makes a great placemat!

They also use the symbols to decorate flour tortillas (that I fold into tipis) and for their Indian vests.

There are also Math lessons that I include with the study of American Indians. They design an AABB pattern sentence strip (with feather attached); it makes a great headdress. They also make an AABB patterned macaroni necklace. All of these items are saved and worn at our Charlie Brown feast.
To make the macaroni necklace, just mix rubbing alcohol and food coloring in a gallon-size Ziploc.

As mentioned in my previous post, my students worked to earn turkey feathers for the month of November. 2 of my friends were proud to earn ALL of their feathers.

As Thanksgiving break approaches, we being to discuss turkey troubles and modern-day traditions. Here are a few activities:

It took a LONG conversation to explain advertising and the Chick-fil-A cows, but they finally understand! =)

For this, I just printed some food and gave everyone half of an index card to draw a self-portrait. Poor sweet potato casserole; my brother would have to disagree with them!!

I do so love the book I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Alison Jackson. I found this idea on Cara Carroll's blog. I actually drew this hair and made copies!! I modeled in which order to glue because it's a little tricky getting that hair settled in the right spot. But oh, these were so cute!

And I can't let a month or holiday go by without teaching my littles some songs:

On the final day before break, my K hall had a Charlie Brown feast. Each of the teachers supplied something for all the students. For example, I bought mandarin oranges for 100 students. Some other feast snack ideas: candy corn, tortilla chips, popcorn, pretzels, cranberry sauce, raisins...
My students picked whether they wanted to dress as a Pilgrim or Indian. They loved this feast!