Turkey Trouble

Turkey Trouble is a favorite in my room each year around Thanksgiving. 

It's funny and clever AND the kids love it!

 I use it to teach problem and solution.

Problem: Turkey is going to be eaten for Thanksgiving by Farmer Jake.

Solution: He dresses up as a pizza delivery "man" to disguise himself.

(This is after trying to disguise himself as many other farm animals, but failing miserably.)

My students complete the reader's response problem/solution page and illustrate each.

We put together the cutest turkey and definitely hang them in the hall proudly!

Here's a close up of the craft:

You can catch this in my TpT store now!

November in a Nutshell

Good grief...when did November get here? I feel like I was just getting excited about it being October!

 After reminiscing through all my November activities, I've decided to put them altogether in one post to help ease your planning needs! 

Below you will find all the fun things we do with turkeys, Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving galore--all grouped by subject. Here is my November in a nutshell!

I came across this template several years ago from The First Grade Parade.

We add feathers each year to our turkey depending upon which phonetic skill we are working with.

The past 2 years they have been 'blend turkeys' and 'digraph turkeys'.

I just love running across cute ideas from other teacher bloggers.

This one comes from Reagan.

We've been talking about verbs so this activity fit perfect into our week.

We read Run Turkey Run and recorded turkey verbs.

Student then chose a verb and created a sentence to mirror that of the title.

"Fly Turkey Fly"

"Snap Turkey Snap"

We always review our knowledge of fact families by making fact family turkeys.

Some years I give my kids the 3 numbers to work with and others I let them generate their own.

It depends on my group from year to year.

I have them write the 3 numbers on the turkey head and the feathers are the facts.

This precious idea comes from Around the Kampfire.

What kid doesn't love THE Pigeon!?!?

Students have to try to persuade others why they should eat hot dogs instead of turkey for Thanksgiving! 

Alliterations are SO much fun! 

What we do is brainstorm words that start with the letter 'T' and record them on our 'turkey words' chart.

Then I have students make their turkey and name him/her.

They pick 4 words from our chart and write an alliteration sentence about their turkey!

Using my It's Thanksgiving Unit (see below), we study pilgrims.

We compare how they lived to how we live.

Students complete a rip art pilgrim and respond to the following:

"If I were a pilgrim boy/girl......"

Last but not least I'm sharing my It's Thanksgiving unit with you. It's packed full of Thanksgiving goodness.

It's a literacy and social studies unit that can be accompanied by any fiction or non-fiction books.

It includes:

-Turkey can/have/are organizer

-Children then and now venn diagram
-Describing Pilgrims bubble map
-Describing Native Americans bubble map
-If You Give A Pilgrim A Pumpkin Pie... writing activity
-Making words with 'Pilgrims'
-Making words with 'Turkeys'
-Thanksgiving ABC order
-Making singular nouns plural with Thanksgiving words

**Grab it on sale for the next 2 days**

Hoping my nutshell of a post gave you some ideas for this month!

November, Turkeys and FREEBIES, Oh My!

Oh how I LOVE this time of year.

Routines are in place, rotations are abounding, readers are blooming...

But most of all it leads to fun themed filled learning experiences. 

Let's talk Turkey!

Decorations:

My team and I turkey'fied' our hall this past week.

We each took a different color feather and had our kiddos trace their hands. 

We change out our picture each month and this month WE are in the Turkey's roasting pan! AH!

Math:

We've been putting our addition and subtraction knowledge together to make fact families. We created fact family turkeys. The numbers to make up the family are on the turkey's head and his tail feathers are actually the facts!

Here's a little extra practice we do with dominoes...

{Click on the picture to download the FREEBIE}

Phonics/Spelling:

To review blends I give each student 4 feathers and have them look through their books in their book boxes for words that have that  blend in them. They record the words on the feathers, I have them read me their words, they outline with marker and create a turkey with them!

{Find the FREE template here from Cara Carroll}

Writing:

Alliterations, or tongue twisters, are one of the most fun things to teach!

Kids love them and what they come up with is even better.

You really get to see how creative firsties can be!

To start this activity, we first brainstorm a list of "T" words.

 

Each students has to do the following:

1. Name their turkey with a "T" name

2. Give their turkey an action

Here is my example I share with the class:

Student work:

"Teddy the turkey threw the tiger at the teacher."

We obviously LOVE turkeys!