THANKSGIVING


Illustrated...

This is the time of the year when our children study the Pilgrims and the Wapanoaog Indians and their harvest celebration of a first long and difficult year in the new world.And this year your students' Thanksgiving illustrations can be as ARTiculate as their writing.

This packet of little drawing lessons will enable your students to recreate the scenes in historic detail. There are many uses for these drawings. To illustrate an essay or report by your students They can write and illustrate a journal about their lives as an Indian girl or a Pilgrim boy.

Each child could draw one figure and write about it.
For example: a deer and the many ways the Pilgrims and Indians used the deer they hunted for food and clothing or how they planted and utilized corn. How they built a cabin it can be a simple or complex as the 
project.

Or everyone can use the shelter drawings and call it My Home...

Which ever you choose, your student will have all the 
visual information they need to be confident.

By drawing these historic events, children are better able to imagine what it might have been like. Here is a packet of 17 reproducible and historically accurate drawing lessons for your students - from Pilgrims and Wampanoag people to cabins and wetus. 

Simple lessons based on geometric shapes they already know will allow for highly individual expression. People will be attracted to a bulletin board with fine writing and good art and your students will take pride in their visual expression. 

Parents can support homework and Home-Schools can create an exciting in depth group project.



SHORT STORIES...


For higher grades there are instructions for creating these accordion books written on the computer then illustrated with colored pencil or marker. Short stories are a great way to reinforce planning and narrative. Or each child could write a chapter in a longer story the class composes.


DRAW! The First Thanksgiving drawing packet can be purchased as an e-packet at TPT and is a great investment for your classroom for years to come. For more ideas for using narrative drawing in the classroom please visit beginnerswork.com

MY THANKSGIVING


Our modern Thanksgiving is a wonderful and warm holiday that everyone can take time to celebrate together. Young children relate well to the holiday and the gathering of friends and family. Preparation of feasts (great or small) and decoration of the house (grand or simple) are memories in the making.

Spending a few weeks in school creating these little books is a nice way to settle down a class after Halloween and welcome the winter ahead. This set of reproducible lessons will help your beginners draw that special day, with lots of detail. 

"A visit to my grandparents" or "when everyone came to visit" makes a meaningful storyline for each child to share when family visits to your classroom around the holidays. And children will love to read their whole family a story they have created around this special holiday. There are many language skills that can be practiced and demonstrated in this activity. For more ways to use drawing in the classroom visit beginnerswork.com see Tell Us A Story.


The short stories below were written and illustrated by Pre-kindergarteners and were shared with their grandparents when they visited our classroom before the Thanksgiving Holiday. The kids were very proud and their grandparents were thrilled! It was great to see them  sitting on laps and reading their own stories to adoring relatives all at once... a joyful noise!


There are many possibilities for story lines in these lessons. A favorite story has been about visiting grandparents with cousins... playing in the snow, eating dinner, going out to see the stars then having hot chocolate and a bed times story. It helps children create a comforting narrative. This packet can be found at TPT