Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was full of fun and educational activities for the preschoolers:

Counting and coloring pilgrims and Native Americans

 Fishing for turkeys (and naming the letters on the turkeys)

 Matching uppercase and lowercase letters with Wikki Sticks

 The three year olds found their names on turkeys in the sensory bin.

 They made turkeys by coloring on coffee filters and spraying them with water to make the colors bleed.

 They also did some crayon rubbings over leaves and turkeys. This introduces them to the idea of texture.  

When they painted over the rubbings with watercolors, the paper was transformed into beautiful artwork! You can see these hanging on our classroom walls. 

 Working on their weekly journals...

Right before Thanksgiving, we made butter in class.  We read some books about some of the chores the pilgrim children had to do after they arrived at their new home. 

This is a poem that I turned into a book with pictures:

Click here to download.

I wanted the kids to get a glimpse of just how hard the pilgrim children had to work every day.  We shook and shook and shook  the bottle of heavy cream until it turned into the dense, yellow butter. 

We ate it on crackers and everybody loved it! Even Mr. Seaholm stopped by to give it a try. (Those are his legs in the background!)

The 3s had some fun matching shapes to the shapes on the bodies of the turkeys.

And they made turkeys with feathers that told items they are thankful for. These kids sure do love their families!

The 4s made pilgrim faces out of those zoo plates that are shaped like animals. They painted the backs and then added hair and faces. 

Sometimes Ladel (St. Matthew's Comfort Dog) comes to visit us. On this day, we lured her upstairs with promises of bananas. 

We learned a lot about pilgrims, and a little about Native Americans.  This picture sort helped the children figure out which items were used by which group of people. 

Before we knew it, it was time for the annual Thanksgiving Feast! The kids donned their pilgrim hats and headed to Krueger Hall, where we played games, made a craft, and ate some snacks.   

Thanks to Marlene and Wendy for helping out!