Mommy's Little Helper: Thanksgiving

Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Thanksgiving Preschool Theme

Today was our Thanksgiving Preschool Theme. We enjoyed reading this printable booklet that you can color as well called "The Story of Thanksgiving".

I have not been taking many pictures lately, but I do have a great list of resources for a Thanksgiving Theme to share with you. Here are some wonderful printable packets:

3 Dinosaurs Thanksgiving Pack

1+1+1=1 Thanksgiving Pack

Our Little Monkey's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Homeschool Creation's Thanksgiving Pack

You can also check out previous Thanksgiving Posts of mine (with more pictures)!

2010

2011

2013

We most likely will be taking a preschool break next week, but will be back for lots of December fun!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Today we talked about gratitude. We read "Bear Says Thanks". Then we talked about all the things we are thankful for. We had fun making a long list and then I pointed out that when we are thankful for something we should thanks especially to our Heavenly Father when we pray. We sang some church songs, "Children All Over the World" and "I Thank Thee, Dear Father". I encouraged him to sometimes say prayers where he just says thanks for things.

This Gobble Gobble Pack has a Thankful printable booklet. Here is one of the pages my son was working on. He has his brothers and blankets on this page.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Today we had a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving! We enjoyed making the things that the characters make in the movie to serve as their Thanksgiving feast. Then we watched the movie (3 times). This is our second year doing that and we've had fun both times.

You can see our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving from last year here. We did more activities last year.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Turkeys

Today we talked about turkeys!

I actually didn't take any pictures today other than the one above with my son and his paper plate turkey, but I have lots of links to share with all kinds of turkey activities. We did some, but not everything. There are a lot of fun ideas to go along with this theme.

A Teaching Mommy's Turkey Pack

Lawteedah's Thanksgiving Tot Pack

Lovely Commotion's Thanksgiving Pack

Kindergarten Fever's Thanksgiving Printable

All Our Day's Thanksgiving Printables

This Reading Mama's Cut it Out turkey printables

Confessions of a Homeschooler's T is for Turkey Printables

Here are some more turkey crafts:

Paper Plate Pop Up Turkey

Turkey Puppet

You can find over 170 turkey crafts at this link

Pattern Block Turkey

Paper Plate Turkey Wreath

You can also check out my turkey post from 2013.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Thanksgiving Preschool Activities

I am going to be spreading out our Thanksgiving activities over a couple of days. There are so many great printable packs and activities for kids out there based on this theme. I don't use everything from every pack, but I generally use a few things from many so I thought I would share some links to some of my favorite activities that are available for free.

There are also other activities out there that stand alone or in their own little packs. I enjoyed the story pictured above because it is about the right length and level for my 3 year old and he could color it.

We also enjoy this Harvest Pattern Activity.

I made this Thanksgiving Matching game several years ago and we continue to use it and enjoy it.

Here is a list of links to various Thanksgiving Activities including the ones pictured above.

We also made a pilgrim hat which I found the patter (there is a smaller one too) here. I realized that this hat was going to be huge for my son, but when it was finished he loved it and didn't want to make a smaller one. I think he looks more like a gnome than a pilgrim, but hey, that's just me.

If you want Turkey themed activities you can check out my Turkey Preschool Theme post from the other day. You can also check out our "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving".

I will not be blogging next week, but we will be back with Christmas themed preschool ideas in December!

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Gratitude

Today we talked a little about gratitude and how we can express our gratitude to others. All month we have been doing Gratitude Leaves this year again. I do this with all of my boys. Each day they write down something they are grateful for. I hope it is a good reminder of all the things they can and should be grateful for. We leave the leaves up throughout the month of November, but I hope they remember it all year long.

I told my son many things I am grateful for and why. I included how grateful I am for him and told him many reasons why I am grateful for him. I also told him that when we are grateful for things and people we should say thank you. We read "Bear Says Thanks" by Karma Wilson.

I also told him that we can thank our Heavenly Father for all the things we have in our life we are grateful since they all come from him. We sang several church songs to go along with this idea including "My Heavenly Father Loves Me", "Children All Over the World", and "I Thank Thee, Dear Father".

Then my son drew pictures of things he was grateful for from this printable book I found in this Gobble Learning Pack.

All in all it was a pretty low-key day, but I hope it is something that sticks with him just the same.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Today we had "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" We love watching that movie and since there are not a lot of Thanksgiving movies out there we have to take advantage of the one we love.

I wanted to do some pre-movie activities. My son kicked the day off by coloring a Charlie Brown and Snoopy coloring page. He is not real big on coloring at this point in his life, but I was happy he did color a few things on the paper.

The Piano Guys have a real fun Charlie Brown Theme Music video that my youngest especially enjoys.

Since one of the things that they have to eat in the movie is jelly beans we sorted some jellybeans by color ourselves.

We also popped some popcorn with our popcorn popper.

Then we used some of the popcorn to make a pilgrim hat outlining it with pieces of popcorn. You have to stick the popcorn in a good spot to really get it to stick to the glue.

Since there is always a scene in the Charlie Brown movies/comics where Lucy tricks Charlie Brown into trying to run and kick a football we got out our football and my son tried to kick it and play a little catch.

Of course, we had to have our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Dinner while we watched our movie. It consists of popcorn, toast, pretzel sticks, and jellybeans. Ironically enough, my son likes all of these things, but not many things in a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. Go figure.

Oh, and be sure to join in singing "Over the River and Through the Woods" at the end of the movie.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Turkey Preschool Theme

Today we talked about turkeys!

There are tons of great Thanksgiving ideas out there. Today we just focused on turkey activities. Check back later in the week for more general Thanksgiving ideas.

I used this little flannel turkey to talk about the different parts of a turkey. You can see he is nothing special, but he gets the job done.

Tom the Turkey With the Terrible Temper is a great story to tell this time of year. I found a turkey on the internet one year and made my own visuals by printing off the turkey with the color of paper I needed.

This is a Turkey Feather Count Game I made a few years ago. You can see my blog post about it here.

I am all about fun ways to get my son practicing his skills with scissors. Here are some cutting activities I found. He loves practicing with this style.

Here is another one that can be colored first.

There are a lot of Turkey Printable Packs out there and even more Thanksgiving ones that have a lot of turkey activities in them. Here are a few favorites. This activity came from this Gobble Gobble Learning Pack. With all the packs I link there are more activities than just what I have pictured.

This Thanksgiving Tot Kit has a lot of fun turkey activities.

This Turkey Printable Pack is probably my overall favorite for this theme. Great preschool age activities.

This link from All Our Days also has several turkey printables.

This file folder game from File Folder Fun is a big favorite at our house.

Here is a link to Five Little Turkey Printables. We read the poem, but didn't do the activities.

There are so many cute crafts for turkeys out there! I let my son pick what he wanted to do because I couldn't decide. He thought a foot and hand print turkey looked fun.

My kindergartener wanted to make a turkey with paint so I helped him paint his hand using brown in his palm for the body and different colors on his fingers for the feathers and head. Then he drew legs, wings, a beak, and the wattle. He also wrote "My turkey is funny."

Here are some links to some more turkey crafts:

Pattern Block turkeys
Paper Plate Turkey Wreath
Turkey with real leaves
Foot Print turkey (also has other Thanksgiving activities)
Ramblings of a Crazy Woman has several turkey crafts

You can also find more ideas from my previous turkey themed days in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Thanksgiving Activities

I am still here, despite my horrible blogging as of late. I decided I would just combined a big post of all the Thanksgiving Activities that I have found lately for us to do since I haven't been faithfully blogging. I will try to be much better at posting our Christmas activities.