Thanksgiving Fun!

Whew!!!

I’m exhausted! Last weekend, my hubby and I cleaned up our house (MUCH NEEDED!) and I even squeezed in some time in my classroom to clean my rug!

Today my littles were CUH-RAZY! The weathermen here in Ohio are predicting 3-5 inches of snow tomorrow so it all makes sense! Children are just little weather predictors, aren’t they!? Ha ha!

We managed to have some fun during the craziness today! The theme for the day was “Thanksgiving Past and Thanksgiving Present” or in Kindergarten terms… “then” and “now”! We used activities from my Thanksgiving Past and Present Mini Pack to get through the day! 

You can see it here on TpT.

First we read the book “Thanksgiving Then and Now” and colored our own black and white version of the story! (Yeah…no photos of student work… L) Here are some photos of the product for you to see since I’m so unreliable with taking photos of my sweet littles and their awesome work! J

Since the words in the book are extremely simple, we took time to discuss what each photograph meant. Did the pilgrims drive cars? What DID they use to move from one location to another?

Then, we sorted “Past” and “Present” pictures whole group and my littles sorted on their own with a black and white student version! Here are some pictures of the sorts!

The color version of the sort is included in the pack. I used a small pocket chart because it was the first one I found!  :) Next year…it will be a bigger pocket chart, ha! 

Here is a student work sample: Once I saw how cramped the space was, I edited right away!! :)

THEN…the real fun began! My littles helped me make butter today! J We discussed how the pilgrims made butter (I showed them a picture of a Plymouth Plantation actor churning butter) and how we can make butter (or how we could just go buy it at the grocery store)!

We took heavy whipping cream and poured it into a Tupperware container! When it was properly secured, we started to SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE…SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE…Shake our cream… Okay…enough singing!

Look at the smile on this face…they had a blast!

I placed the butter onto a piece of bread and let students try out their finished product! You’d think I would have spread pure sugar onto that bread…they. Just. Exploded. Good thing we waited to make butter until the end of the day! WHEW! I’m barely keeping my eyes open here! Since my sweeties grabbed up the bread/butter faster than I could snap a photograph, here is a photo from last year when I made the butter with my first graders!!

What fun things are you and your students doing for Thanksgiving?! Is anyone super lucky and already on break?!

Mary