Thanksgiving Activities

Wow! We had such a great "week" before Thanksgiving! Instead of flexibly grouping for reading, we decided to keep our homeroom classes so they could participate in some fun Thanksgiving activities. Here are a few things we did:

1. Learned about the meaning of Thanksgiving!

We watched a brainpop video and read some Thanksgiving books to learn the true meaning of the holiday.  We also created "The First Thanksgiving" diorama where students showed how the pilgrims and Native Americans ate the first harvest feast. We also wrote the meaning of Thanksgiving on the back of the diorama so they could share it with their relatives over the holiday. My students were so excited to share their dioramas with their family members!

If you look really close, you will notice with "corn field" in front of the house. So creative and thoughtful!

2. Run, Turkey, Run!!

We read a story called, "Run, Turkey, Run!" where the story of Thanksgiving was told through the perspective of the turkey. My students pretended that they were turkeys and had to persuade people not to eat them for Thanksgiving. They wrote reasons that they should not be eaten (i.e. "I taste bad", "I am disguised as another animal", "I might claw your belly after you eat me"). They were very creative and didn't even realize they were writing a persuasive piece! So fun!!

3. Wrote "I'm Thankful For Letters"

Part of the goal for Thanksgiving is to teach students to be thankful.  As a class, we generated a list of things they are thankful for and wrote them down on paper. They are helping and encouraging each other to come up with all sorts of things to be thankful for. Then, we wrote letters to each other/family members telling them what they were thankful for. It is amazing to see how grateful they were for all of their "blessings"!

4. Pumpkin Pie!!

To end our Thanksgiving unit, we concluded the day with pumpkin pie in a bag. We read the directions on the recipe and made the pumpkin pie in groups of four. Each group was given a Ziploc bag with vanilla pudding mix. We added milk, pumpkin pie filling, and some spices to make our treat. Each student got a turn squeezing the bag to mix all of the ingredients together. Then, each student was given a cup with crushed graham crackers. Each student was squeezed some pumpkin pie in their cup and topped it off with whipped cream. So yummy!!!! The kids loved it so much that they asked for seconds! I printed the recipe and sent it home with the kids to make at home! :)

Thank you to all of the parents who donated items for our pumpkin pie treat! I am so thankful for such amazing parents who are willing to donate time/resources to make special memories for my students. I appreciate you very much!

I love the look on their faces! It was definitely a little squishy!!!

So yummy! :)

I think Cameran and Logan enjoyed their treat!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!

Owl Pellets!!!

After learning about many types of habitats and life cycles of animals, our class focused on food chains last week. They learned about how energy transfers and how animals need each other and plants to survive. They even briefly learned fancy terms like herbivore and carnivore (these terms aren't perfected yet though!). On Thursday, the kids made their own food chains where they started with either the sun or a plant and finished with a larger animal. On Friday, they learned how life cycles really work with a hands-on experiment. We actually dissected owl pellets!! For those of you that do not know about owl pellets...here is brief description:
1. The owl eats an animal whole (mouse, snake, etc.).
2. After 3-6 hours, all of the "meat" from the animal has been digested.
3. The owl "coughs up" a small pellet of fur and bones.

Groups of three or four were given an owl pellet and some popsicle sticks to use for the dissection process. They separated the bones from the fur, and made predictions about what type of animal they think the bones came from. It was an awesome experiment because they actually got to see many different types of animal bones! Check out our pictures!

Look how engaged they are with dissecting! So much fun!

This group separated all of the bones and fur.

Here is an up close and personal shot of the dissection process!



THANK YOU to Mr. Lynn and Mrs. Mendez for volunteering to help me for the dissection.  The kids did a wonderful job, but I definitely couldn't have done it without volunteers!