Thanksgiving
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Friday Freebie – Thankful Jar
Happy Friday! I hope that you all survived Halloween, and now that it’s over I’m sure you’ve started hearing Christmas carols, but before we think Christmas let’s squeeze some Thanksgiving in there! This Thankful Jar activity from the Camping Teacher is a great way to share a little love with a special member of your staff. Ask your students to share why they are most thankful for this person, write all of their thoughts down and create a perfect little gift. Go download your copy now and have a great weekend!
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Engaging families in community service projects
This week I’ve been sharing ideas for starting a community service project in the preschool classroom. For any school community service project to be successful you have to engage families and get them excited about the project. This is not always an easy feat, so here are some of the ways that I’ve encouraged parent participation – and actually gotten it! Get the children excited about the project – when you’re working with preschoolers you can use their enthusiasm to your advantage. If the children are excited about your project then they will not stop talking about it, they will let their parents in on every single detail, and they’ll…
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Community Service Projects for Preschoolers
Preschoolers love to help, so I try to use their desire to be helpful to help teach empathy, and November is the perfect time of year for that. As you begin to think about Thanksgiving and the holiday season, consider tackling a community service project with your class. The key is choosing a subject that the children will get excited about. It is also helpful to do something concrete – something that the children can participate in first-hand and see the results for themselves. Finally, make sure that you communicate the details about the project openly with your parents and families, because you’ll need their help too! Here are some…
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November Challenge!
One of my favorite project topics for the month of November is community service. It’s the perfect time of year to help children understand empathy and encourage families to take part in the project too. So today I’m challenging you to work with your students to come up with a community service project that you can take on together. Do your students love animals? Think about collecting supplies for a local shelter. Do your students love to be outside? Work with families to clean up a local park. One year my class collected food for our local food pantry, and then we were able to take a field trip to…
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Friday Freebie – Pumpkin Spice Gift Set
Happy Friday! I have something a little different for you this week. This freebie is designed to spread the autumn love and it’s a blog exclusive so you can only get it right here! Brighten someone’s day with this sweet little pumpkin spice set. Whether you send your favorite teacher a Halloween surprise, get a co-worker a little autumn pick-me-up, or share a latte with a good friend, this set is the perfect way to celebrate a love for pumpkin spice! It includes the orange tag card, the lattice pumpkin coffee sleeve, and some additional little circles that you can use as stickers or sprinkle around like confetti. Cut out…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Card by Red Stamp
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Printable Decorations for Thanksgiving
Whether you’re still pulling together your annual classroom celebration, or your preparing for you own family’s feast, I’ve got one more Thanksgiving treat for you! These Thanksgiving decorations are 100% printable, making them your last minute lifesaver for any Thanksgiving celebration that needs a little sprucing up. The set includes a festive bunting, name tags, treat bag toppers, a door decoration, and cupcake picks (or they could also be stickers. I have these decorations available for every holiday because they have changed the way I celebrate. Everything can be printed when I need more, and if there is something that I want to save for next year, like the bunting,…
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Classroom Gratitude Journal
The easiest way to help children understand gratitude is to talk about it over and over again. I’ve created a really cute freebie that will help your students put practice their thankfulness, while recording what happens each day. These pages can be used to create a classroom gratitude journal. Each day ask your students what they are thankful for, or grateful for. In the beginning you’ll likely get the same answers again and again – “I’m thankful that we got to play outside” and “I’m thankful for snack time.” You may need to set an example by telling the class what you are thankful for each day, but with practice…
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Teaching Thankfulness
Thanksgiving is a two-part holiday – first, you’ve got the historical references, and then there are the social emotional lessons. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to help children practice being thankful, and for very young preschoolers, this may be the first time they’ve ever considered the fact they they are lucky to have certain people and things in their lives. There are a number of ways to help children focus on what they are thankful for this holiday season, here are a few ideas; Host a food drive. This doesn’t have to be just for Thanksgiving, make it last until your winter break. Families need help all winter long! Some…
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Finding Joy
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Friday Freebie – Thanksgiving Roll and Graph
Happy Friday! For me, November means Thanksgiving. I spend the entire month planning and re-planning what I’m going to take to our Thanksgiving celebrations. I search endlessly for new recipes, and inevitably end up making the same old favorites. Today’s freebie fights right in with my monthly theme of food! This cute roll and graph from Ashley Hughes is all about Thanksgiving dinner. I can see kiddos loving this game, and learning so much as they begin to recognize the vocabulary and practice recording their data on the graph. This would be a great activity for large groups or smalls groups, so go download it and add it to those…
