Holiday Activities and Freebies!
Are you looking for an easy way to bring some seasonal fun and themed learning to your classroom this fall? These November read alouds for kindergarten are a great way to add engagement to your lesson plans!
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Read alouds are such a great way to introduce new vocabulary to your kindergarteners and add some seasonal engagement to your classroom. Here are some of my favorite books to share with students during the month of November:
This book is a fun addition to a turkey unit! In Turkey Trouble by Wendi J. Silvano, a turkey tries to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner by disguising himself as other animals on the farm. Students always love following the antics of the clever turkey in this story.
After enjoying this book as a class, students can write about their favorite disguise from the story. Then, they can write about and create their own disguise for the turkey that serves as a front cover of their writing.
This fun book is another story about a turkey who is trying to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner. In this story, a turkey tries to find the perfect hiding spot on the farm by running from place to place. It’s a great story for sequencing practice, since you can discuss the order of the hiding places with your students.
This story can also inspire a fun writing craftivity! Students can create paper turkey legs with accordion folding and then color the tennies shoes in a color of their choice. They can then create a header for their craft by filling in their first name on the line and writing a sentence about where they would run if they were the turkey.
Kindergarteners always love to listen to this fun story by Steve Metzger. In The Great Turkey Race, three turkeys participate in a field day of activities to decide who is the most special turkey. Once they discover that the special turkey is actually going to be Thanksgiving dinner, they hatch a plan to escape together.
One of my favorite questions to ask students after reading this book is where they think the turkeys went after leaving the farm. Students can write and illustrate a sentence about where they think the turkeys went. They can also create a cute turkey craft to go with their writing for a fun fall bulletin board!
This book is a great option for the beginning of a Thanksgiving unit study. Students can learn about the first Thanksgiving with this engaging book written by Ann McGovern. There are a lot of interesting facts about Thankskgiving included in this book that will help students as they continue the Thanksgiving unit.
After reading this book together as a class, students can create their own take-home book about the first Thanksgiving. This is a fun way for them to review Thanksgiving vocabulary! They will love taking home their books to share with their families.
In this story, a boy named David has a vivid imagination that he uses to relive the first Thanksgiving while preparing for Thanksgiving at his own home. The illustrations from this book provide an opportunity for side-by-side comparisons between Thanksgiving then and now.
You can continue this discussion with a fun craft project! Students can color two homes to create a lift-the-flap craft. Students will place objects under each home that would go with Thanskgiving then or now. Then, they can write a sentence to go under each home, comparing our modern-day selves to pilgrims.
For young students, it’s helpful to teach them what it means to be thankful for something. The abstract concept of gratitude is something that young students might not be familiar with. This great book by Margatet Sutherland is a great way to open that discussion with your students!
After reading and discussing the concept of giving thanks, students can practice with a writing project! Students and write an illustrate a sentence about something they are thankful for. These make a great classroom display in November! Students are always so excited to see what their peers are thankful for.
Finally, The Thanksgiving Surprise by Peggy Archer is another fun read aloud for November. In this book, two pilgrims are looking for a turkey to eat for the Thanksgiving dinner. The younger pilgrim starts to have second thoughts about having turkey for dinner and works hard to convince the older pilgrim to abandon the hunt. One lucky turkey is able to run away and hide as a result!
This book allows for some fun retelling practice! Students can assemble their own retelling mats that they can use to recount the events from the story. They love moving the characters around the mat as they retell the story!
Students can also think about what they would do if they were to help a turkey hide from Thanksgiving dinner. They can write and illustrate a sentence about where they would hide the turkey.
If you’re interested in using some of the read aloud companion activities that I shared in this post, you can find all of them (and more!) in my bundle of November thematic units. These units are packed with seasonal literacy and math activities along with engaging companion activities for your November read alouds.
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.
Be sure to save this post if you’d like to come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these read alouds and companion activities when you’re working on your November lesson plans.
