A Time for Giving Lesson Plan

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What We Are Learning
 

Social and Life Skills Focus: 

relationship skills/social awareness

 

Social Studies Focus:

Thanksgiving

 

Theme Vocabulary:

Thanksgiving, giving, sharing, a helping hand

 

Skills We’re Practicing:

group discussion, critical thinking, vocabulary, visual discrimination

  • If You’re Thankful and You Know It by Chrissy Bozik is a lovely story, set to a familiar melody. Read the words to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and encourage students to act out the words. Children will delight in pretending to jump into leaves, honk with the geese as they fly south for winter, and more.

Materials: orange or brown balloon, construction paper, doublestick tape, googly eyes (optional)

  • Practice kindness with the help of a festive “friend”!
  • First, make a turkey balloon. (Careful: Deflated balloons are a choking hazard.) Cut feather shapes and a beak from paper. Cut circles for eyes or use googly eyes. Inflate balloon and use double-stick tape to attach the pieces.
  • Have students sit in a circle, and introduce them to the turkey. (Feel free to give it a fun name, like Timmy Turkey.) Say the turkey is here to help them give compliments to each other. Pretend to have the turkey whisper a compliment in your ear. Then give a compliment to the student sitting next to you. Encourage that student to say “thank you.”
  • Then pass the turkey to that student. Continue passing the turkey around the circle until everyone has received a compliment. Ask students to share how it felt to receive and to give a compliment. cooperation/social awareness

Materials: small paper cups, construction paper in a variety of colors, liquid glue, markers, chart paper, number cube, googly eyes (optional)

  • Strengthen counting skills with this turkey-themed game.
  • In advance, make a game board. On a sheet of chart paper, use markers to make a simple path, placing 15-20 dots or squares about two inches apart, with a “start” line at the beginning and a “finish” line at the end. Cut enough “feathers” from the construction paper so that each student has two or three.
  • Tell students that they will make their own turkey game pieces. Give each student a paper cup, feathers, and a set of markers. Have them use glue to attach the feathers to the back of their game piece and use markers to draw a face on the front. They can add googly eyes if they’d like. Let the glue dry.
  • To play the game, 2-4 students will take turns rolling the number cube and “trotting” that number of spaces. The first turkey to the finish line wins! one-to-one correspondence/counting/turn taking