A Thanksgiving Class Recipe Book and a Friday Flash Freebie

Thanksgiving is next week and already I am thinking of that amazing, once-a-year dinner!  Thanksgiving is a time of traditions, thankfulness, and, of course, food!

So, I thought I would share a little writing project we did last year as a class.  It takes a little time and preparation, but it is worth it!  I promise!

We spent one lesson having group discussions on Thanksgiving traditions.  What we do with our families, what our traditions are, what food we have at our feasts.  

Then each child was asked to think of their favorite Thanksgiving recipe.  They were to bring this recipe to school.

Then we wrote!  We wrote about our family Thanksgiving traditions and what we remember or think of when looking at this recipe.

We went into the computer lab and each student typed up their own recipe and paragraph. (I proofread!)

I gave each student the opportunity to choose a clip art picture to go with their recipe as the finishing touch to their cookbook page!

I sent to our local ESU to be printed and bound and we were able to send home before Thanksgiving break!

These were a huge hit with my families.  The writing piece at the bottom of each recipe really made it worth it.

This year, we are doing this a holiday gift for parents.  So even though you may not have enough time to do this before Thanksgiving, you could have it done in time for your Christmas or Holiday break!

Today's Friday Flash Freebie is an oldie but a goodie.

My Cause and Effect packet is a set of activities meant to teach and reinforce the concept of cause and effect in a variety of ways.

Page 1 & 2 - Cause and Effect Practice Sheet and Answer Key
Page 3 - Cause and Effect Short Story Activity
Page 4 - Cause and Effect Picture Activity
Page 5 - Cause and Effect Trees Activity
Page 6 - Cause and Effect Puzzle Activity
Page 7, 8, & 9 - Cause and Effect Card Game
Page 10 - Cause and Effect Activity using the picture book "Tuesday" by David Weisner
Page 11 - Cause and Effect activity using a book of your choosing
Page 12 - Cause and Effect Transitions worksheet

Enjoy!

Pilgrims (Thanksgiving) Unit

We are learning about Pilgrims in Kindergarten!

To start, we must learn where the Pilgrims came from.  So we created an interactive "Crossing of the Mayflower"!

We read our Pilgrim booklets!

We colored in a Mayflower Crossing Map with the starting point green for go and red for stop.

We also learned what life was like for Pilgrim children.

  Check out the Pilgrims we made!

To download this unit, click on the picture below!

SCARECROWS!!!

I love Scarecrows almost as much as I love Autumn!  We started off our Scarecrow unit by making and reading our little Scarecrow Colors Book (reinforces our Colors Unit from a few weeks ago!)  They were super cute!

Check out these fun scarecrow crafts we made (with REAL STRAW!)

The students used their listening skills to finish drawing this scarecrow picture.

We labeled our scarecrows and learned the differences and similarities between scarecrows and people.

 Finally, we did a little "crow counting"!

 To download this unit, click on the picture below!

 

Pumpkin and Harvest Unit

This week we kicked off our Harvest Unit focusing mostly on pumpkins.  

I was lucky enough to have a couple students donate pumpkins and gourds from their gardens...enough for two for each student.  So as we read our pumpkin books, we compared our pumpkins and gourds to each other and what the book was telling us.

 We described our class pumpkin through drawing and words.  We estimated the circumference of the big class pumpkin using yarn (the orange is each student's estimate and the green is the actual).

 We estimated the weight of our pumpkin and compared the weight of our own pumpkin to the weight of ourselves by allowing each student to pick up the pumpkin.

 We even put together a pumpkin number center.

Finally, it was time to carve into the pumpkin!

 Each child was encouraged to stick their hand in the pumpkin, feel it, smell it, grab some seeds (which we used below!).  They loved it!!!!!  Then we showed what the inside of the pumpkin looked like by using the seeds and yarn.

 We decorated our pumpkin pies!

And then we had fun talking about feelings with our Jack poem!

To download this unit, click here!