Fun Thanksgiving-Themed Activities for Kindergarten

If you are looking for fun Thanksgiving Activities for Kindergarten, keep reading. We have some tremendous hands-on Pilgrim Jobs Writing Activity, pocket chart number sense activity, and now & then themed social studies learning.

Pilgrim Jobs Writing Activities

Check out these Pilgrim Jobs writing activities. This is sure to be a class favorite for teachers, but especially students.

We begin by connecting our thoughts to a book. I love to start with the book The Pilgrim’s First Thanksgiving by Ann McGovern. Next, we select a card with the Pilgrim job listed on it. Students work to think about what makes this job hard and why it is important to all the Pilgrims. One of the sentences above says, “I am a pilgrim. My job is to cook. It is hard because it could burn me.’

My kinders loved picking the jobs, but it takes effort for them to think about why others would want them to do that job too.

Comparing Numbers Pocket Chart

Another one of our fun Thanksgiving-themed activities for Kindergarten includes this harvest comparing number cards for a pocket chart. We play these pocket chart games in small groups and at calendar time. I leave the cards up all week so my students can play teacher at centers with the cards as well. They love playing teacher so much and I laugh at how much extra practice they get during this time.

These cards are open-ended, but here are a few ways we worked on building number sense during calendar time. They provide so many engaging number sense practices that your students will run to play.

The first activity is based on number sense. I give students two numbers. Students fill in the sign of a comparing number to make that expression true. I provide greater than, less than, and equal to symbols.

Another activity is to give your learners a math expression. They work to add new numbers on top of the existing numbers to make them remain true. Look back at the image to see the layered cards.

Now & Then, Past & Present, Long Ago & Today

Another standard we cover this week, we dive into Now and Then. While diving into Pilgrim jobs, we talk about what chores looked like a long time ago and how they are the same or different from chores today. You can see a fun way to sort these jobs shown above.

Since the words now and then are both sight words, we can use this simple Now & Then reader to add these words to this book. (This is a teacher favorite for YEARS.)