One big part of teaching older kids that I MISS is teaching HISTORY! (I taught 4th and 5th grade before switching to part time kindergarten.) I taught kindergarten a few years and didn’t love what I was finding for teaching about the first Thanksgiving! 🤷🏻♀️ I don’t do worksheets. 🤷🏻♀️ I want something the kids would love. I needed something I could do in a half day setting. 🤷🏻♀️
Being my kindergartners are there only half day, I cannot dedicate a ton of crafting time for making pilgrim hats and Indian hats which is what the bulk of what I saw being done years ago when I looked. Or lots of worksheets. Yes, I could make one but I really wanted to spend more time on actual lessons, but I also wanted to practice cutting and glueing! Kindergarteners need that practice and some are still very behind. When you can’t find something you like, then you just make your own! 👌🏼
I also try to make sure everything I do has a learning aspect because we are so short on time. I created a simple book that incorporated reading, writing and crafting! 🥰 🙌🏼
I am not going to lie, but I am proud of myself for making this! It’s been a successful Thanksgiving mini unit for several years!🙌🏼
I really love using gray paper as well. The construction paper gives it an older feel which is perfect for a history book. 😉
If there is time to do more than one page in the day then we will do more than one page but I just go with the schedule for the year!
I start the unit by having my class watch a short Thanksgiving video. Then I start the movie over and only do a short part to talk about the pages in our book.
Watch till 1:10 seconds. Hit pause and ask students if they heard what the people were called. Some kindergarten years, someone knows to say pilgrims while other kindergarten years, they don’t get it right so we re-watch it listening for what the people were called. If they still didn’t get it then I tell them. 😉
Then I point out how the boy pilgrims dress WAY differently then we do. I allow my students to practice contrast (reading skill 😏) and tell how the boy pilgrims dressed different. The more kids hear vocabulary words, the more they will understand it.
Example what to say, “Let’s contrast – that means tell how they are different. Let’s contrast how the boy pilgrims and us dress differently.”
I focus on the hat (that is hopefully mentioned) and explain that Long time ago people used to our hats all the time long time ago people used to wear hats all the time! The boy pilgrims wore black top hats and the girl pilgrims wore bonnets.
I show my students the first page in their book. We write our name on the back of the paper. Then I read the sentence to the students. The instructions given next is to trace their sentence and then color the pilgrims.
While they are doing this for 10ish minutes, I can pull kids individually to work with them on any phonemic skills or math skills. 🙌🏼 I LOVE this book because it gives me 30ish minutes a day to work with students individually. 🙌🏼 I love intervention time!
Then I show how to cut the bonnet and glue it on. For the top hat, we glue the square on the top of the boy’s head, then put the rectangle on covering the bottom of the square. Finish the top hat with a yellow/gold square and draw a black square to finish the buckle!
After each page is completed and dried, they get piled and put aside till the end!
When we go to the 2nd page, we re-watch the video but this time I ask them to listen for the name of the boat.
I read to them the second page of their First Thanksgiving Book. While I pass out the cutting pieces, they write their name on the back and begin tracing the sentence.
I pass out the boat piece and the sails! Because I like my students to not have the edges showing I ask them to write their name in the middle of the boat and the sails. Or just the 1st letter works too. 👌🏼 I then pass out two rectangles while they are cutting.
We all stop cutting to start glueing. We glue the two rectangles vertically on the half dots. Then glue the boat (name face down- put glue on the name side) on the line. Lastly, I let them choose 2-3 sails how they can fit them.
When it is time to do the next page, we will rewatch the video and stop it at the correct amount of seconds and discuss what happened next. My students usually can you tell me that it was winter time and really cold. I take this time to expand on what it meant to have a hard winter. I explained that they didn’t have time to make warm homes and they didn’t have a bunch of warm blankets. They also did not have much food because they had no idea what winter would be like so they were not prepared and many did not make it. 😢
All we use on this page is white paint!!
This is the day we usually do 2 pages because I can’t have all my students paint at once! Before we start to paint, we watch a bit more of the movie and stop when we meet Squanto.
We briefly talk about Squanto and how he looks and dresses differently than the pilgrims.
This is where I explain to the class, even though Squanto had different skin color and dressed differently, the pilgrims were still kind to him. Differences don’t mean we can’t be friends with someone who looks or speaks differently then us. ❤️ We also learn that we can ask for help even if it’s hard or scary to ask for help.
The next two pages go with the same pausing part of the video. These pages I can only get 1 done day or give an hour to complete.
We mix up paint (yellow and gold/tiny bit of brown). The kids use a cotton swap to dab corn kernels onto the cob. They also paint the squash with a paint brush or color with a crayon. (Just depends on the year.) While the corn is drying, they start tracing the next page and then cutting turkey feathers. Finish corn later that day, the next day or if you completed another page.
We draw a dot on the paper and fan out the feathers to glue on. They draw the face on the turkey and glue the body slightly over the feathers!
I let my students choose if they want 1 or 2 fish on their page.
The last page of the First Thanksgiving Book is just a coloring page, but we talked about how many different colors the cornucopia and food have. They even get to use markers. 🙌🏼 Before coloring we talk about how grateful the pilgrims were to have made friends, learned how to grow food and hunt and to have so much food! They were very grateful they could live and be happy in the new land which would be known as America.
A cornucopia is used as a symbol of plenty or abundance (which are fancy words for a lot!) That is why the cornucopia is on the last page. It reminds us that we should think about how blessed we are! 🥰
I usually compile the books the day before we do the cornucopia page because our cornucopia page is usually done right before our big feast. While kids are eating the last page is stapled on! As they walk out the door, I give them their books and tell them to practice reading it with their parents. 🥰🙌🏼 When I get feedback (we don’t always get feedback 😉), parents love this book. ❤️😍
It is currently available on Teachers Pay Teachers!! Check it out!
Even though my kindergarteners are not able to write their own sentences, I created blank pages for older grades to write in their own words. 🥰
