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| First Grade Turkey Art and Activities |
I found some cute First Grade Turkey Art and Activities to do when we get back on track Monday. I have my favorite Turkey books to read first of all. Then we’ll talk about what Thanksgiving is all about.
Here are two of my favorites that are SO GREAT for first graders. The first one is a funny story about animals that come to dinner at Mr. Turkey’s house. The second one is a darling ABC book about Thanksgiving. Great for building background knowledge about the pilgrims.
Today we’ll just focus on the American Holiday started by the Pilgrims who came from England to escape a bossy king. We’ll add to the history lesson later in the week.
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| I usually do a Venn diagram like this one from The Controlled Chaos Classroom’s blog. |
Kids are always amazed at how hard Pilgrim kids worked. Then we’ll have a discussion of what things the pilgrim kids had to do for chores compared with what easy lives kids today have and what kinds of chores they all have. Then we’ll do a brainstorm of what we should all be thankful for this year.
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| First Grade Turkey Art and Activities |
We’ll do a cute crossword puzzle about Thanksgiving. The downloadable freebie is HERE. I also have a Thanksgiving Read the Room center we will put out this week. A simple printable story about the pilgrims coming here from England is HERE at TPT. This will also be a great reading passage to do together.
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| Before having the kids glue the strips, have them write 1 word on each of things they are thanksful for. This is a prewrite activity. I wrote a brainstorm from our discussion on the board so this is always easy for them to do after that. |
I like doing an artsy turkey a few weeks before Turkey Day and then write about the things we are grateful for. I found some cute and free writing paper that has some pilgrims and Native Americans on the top HERE. We will go through the writing process and do a sloppy copy, edit and then rewrite our “I’m Thanksful for…. narrative writing project.
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| The body was a 6 inch brown circle and the head was around 4 1/2. I just cut them out and had them in stacks for the kids to come get with their “rectangle feathers”. Use the correct terminology and they will learn those geometry shapes. The legs are also rectangles and the toes are made from 3 small rectangles. The nose is a triangle. |
The accordian legs are always a little bit hard for the kids to do so I go around and help fold for those who are struggling. You can do the toes like I did or if your kids can do it give them 1 orange strip and they can snip it into 3 pieces and glue together to make toes. They are always funny looking. D
Then we’ll put together our wiggly eyed turkeys. I use 2 1/2 inch by 8 1/2 inch strips of the 6 colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) paper strips. We will glue them into a raindrop look shape. Then all of those 6 raindrops glue in rainbow order to a 6 inch circle of brown. Add 2 yellow 1 x 11 legs folded accordian style. Glue on orange feet made from 3 inch long x 1/2 inch long strips made into a bird footprint. (glue all 3 ends together and opposite end spread out.
Glue a 4 inch circle of brown for head. Add 2 white wiggly eyes, a yellow triangle beak doubled and folded.
Lastly add a red “gobble” under the beak and a bow with some checked fabric or ribbon on the front of the turkey. Some years I’ve done it in gingham red or orange. I’ll have to see what I find at Hobby Lobby.
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| Cute little First Grade Turkey with his wiggly eyes and funny legs. |
The eyeballs I found are HERE at Flamingo Toes. Another one I found HERE at Kiki Creates blog. Another blogger had such a cute post using wiggly eyeballs for a class behavior motivator. Her darling post is Here at Teacher to the Core. Check her printable eyeballs out HERE. Zombie eyeballs Here on TPT.
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| There were lots of activities for free download at this site; a crossword, a maze, a word search and a word scramble. We did the crossword puzzle on the back of this writing paper. Thanks to Free Printables.com. The other 4 worksheets are just below this one on their site. |
Lastly we played some Pilgrim and Pumpkin Roll and Cover games HERE at TPT. I loved this one with the Old Lady Who Swallowed “Too Much Turkey and Pumpkin Pie” for Thanksgiving. It has a really cute visual for adding up 2 dice. It is HERE at Mrs. Lirettes Learning Blog.
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| I found these solar turkey and pilgrim puppets at the Dollar Store. Aren’t they just the cutest? My little grandkids love playing with them. They dance when you put them in the sun. Funny! |
For centers I have Turkey Read the Room this week. It is just a bunch of turkeys with sight words on them. I’ll hide them all over the room. Kids use clipboards with lined paper to find as many as they can.
My kids LOVED playing both of these during center time. Turkeys are always a hoot. Or a Gobble Gobble.
