Connecting Math, Literacy and Social Studies to Learn About the First Thanksgiving

From October to January we move from one Holiday to the next creating memories, developing schema and growing dendrites all through highly engaging, rigorous activities. Here are a few of the activities we did this week as we are learning about The First Thanksgiving.

Making the Regalia

We learned that Native Americans of long ago, and on special occasions today, we special clothes called Regalia. We talked about these clothes being like party clothes. They wear the clothes to celebrate special events in their culture. We made quivers (for holding arrows). The kids laced their quiver together with a piece of yarn. Then, we used feathers which we dipped in black paint to draw Native American Symbols.

We smashed berries to make dye for our string. I have tried several types of berries, but the frozen ones seem to work best. They have more juice than fresh berries. After smashing the berries with a rock, the put a piece of cotton string in the bowl and dyed it. We placed the string on a paper towel to dry. We are going to make clay beads later in the week to string.

We made the vests using pattern block patterns and paper bags.

Thanksgiving Literacy Centers: _at Family Words

One of our literacy centers this week is to make a list of _at words. To make the spinner, I cut a hole in the Pilgrim's hat to make a "window". I made a wheel with onsets for the _at family. Then, I attached the wheel to the back of the card so that the onset would show in the window. The children move the wheel to create a new _at family word.

Mayflower Compound Words

The children cut apart pictures and matched them together to make compound words. We talked about Mayflower being a compound word.

Math Activities: Five Big, Fat Turkeys

We taught our kids a song about 5 Big, Fat Turkeys. Then, we used paper turkeys to make different combinations of 5.

Pattern Bead Necklaces

The kids colored patterns in this easy to reproduce bead necklace book. At the top of each page, it shows the children which pattern to make.

Social Studies and Graphic Organizers

We worked together to create a circle map where we wrote all of the words we associated with Thanksgiving. As I was modeling by making the large circle map, each child was engaged as they were writing the words on their smaller circle maps.