Thanksgiving Activities

This is my favorite time of the year! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas there it is so easy to add fun into teaching with all of the holidays. Teaching the bigger kiddos you might think that they don't love doing holiday related things in the class room, but let me tell you they love it just as much as the little kids. 

I have been working really hard this year on trying to motivate my students by trying to add some fun into every day. One way I have been doing this is with incorporating technology into as much as the day as I can. One way I've been doing this is with my Daily Five centers and my new Thanksgiving Themed Spin and Solve language center. My kids love using the QR code scanner as a self check and I love that they are practicing so many skills! 

In math we have been working on decimal operations and my kids have been loving this Thanksgiving Dinner task card set that is in my store. At first we use these as a write the room and usually we don't get completely finished, so my kids begged me to put them into our RTI math centers so they could finish up. You wouldn't believe how much more engaged they are when the task cards are themed and have cute graphics. 

Finally, it just so happened that we have been learning about explorers and colonization in social studies. Cute things just make students more engaged, I am a firm believer in that!

We all know that classrooms have a wide variety of abilities, but everyone has to learn the same things. The Mayflower Compact is a difficult document for some of my kiddos to read, so I find that close reading really helps them dig deeper into the text, and by providing abridged texts all of my students have the same chance to understand the importance of this document. So for my class I created a close reading pack for the Mayflower Compact. 

Finally, I know that this time of the year can be CRAZY for everyone! One the last day of school before Thanksgiving break I like to do a review with math and you know I've got to have something themed as well! Kids love this Thanksgiving word problem review! Grab it in my store for FREE until Thanksgiving! 

What do you do in your classroom to get in the holiday spirit and help your kiddos learn? I hope that maybe some of these products will help you the way they help me!