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Themed activities are a great way to keep your students engaged in learning during the busy month of November. If you’re looking for some theme inspiration for your classroom, check out this post! I’m sharing my favorite November themes for kindergarten that are always a hit with students.
Thematic units are a great addition to your lesson plans throughout the school year, but they’re especially helpful in the busy month of November. Students have just finished up Halloween festivities and are now eagerly looking forward to upcoming holidays and breaks from school. This excitement naturally overflows into their school day, making it difficult for students to focus their energy on learning.
This is when thematic units come in handy! You’re able to help students channel some of their excitement into worthwhile skill practice. The themed activities will keep students engaged and help you celebrate the upcoming holiday without putting learning on the back burner.
The first theme that I love to do with my kindergarten students in November is a turkey thematic unit. Here are some ways that you can incorporate turkeys into your learning activities in November.
There are so many fun books about turkeys that you can use to practice comprehension, writing, and more!
First, you can read “Turkey Trouble” by Wendi J. Silvano together as a class. After reading and discussing the events from the book, students are always excited to create a disguise for their own turkey! Students can decorate their own turkey and then write a sentence to go with it.
Another fun book to read with your students is “The Great Turkey Race” by Steve Metzler. You can make predictions about where the turkeys ran off to and have students create a writing craftivity.
You can also bring turkey fun to math practice with some hands-on activities.
After practicing patterns together as a class, students can practice creating and continuing a variety of patterns.
Students can also complete pattern books to help them practice identifying, continuing, and creating patterns in many different ways.
These hands-on turkey pattern crafts can combine fine motor and math practice as students. These colorful turkeys also make a festive Thanksgiving decoration for your classroom!
Your students can practice fine motor skills as they create an adorable turkey hat!
They can also practice following directions as they assemble their hats.
Your students will love this turkey snack that doubles as pattern practice!
Each turkey treat is made from a crispy rice treat ball with candy eyes and a candy corn beak. Students will place toothpicks in the ball and stack colored cereal in different patterns.
You can also have a week of Thanksgiving fun in your kindergarten classroom during the month of November. This engaging kindergarten theme will help students learn more about the history of this holiday as they practice literacy and math skills.
As part of your Thanksgiving-themed literacy practice, you can read a variety of nonfiction books about Thanksgiving and the Mayflower.
Students can create a craft and writing project that describes what they would take with them if they were to travel on the Mayflower.
Students can also complete a writing craftivity about whether or not they would want to travel on the Mayflower and why.
You can help your students improve the comprehension skills of comparing and contrasting. They can compare the contrast the lives of pilgrims and the lives that people lead now.
Students can also put together a book about the first Thanksgiving. You can spread out the creation of this book over an entire week of learning about this holiday.
Fiction books are also a great addition to a themed week of learning about Thanksgiving. One of my favorite picture books is “The Thanksgiving Surprise” by Peggy Archer. This story is great for practicing sequencing and story retelling. Students can color this retelling activity and recreate the story sequence to show the different places where the turkey hid from the pilgrims.
Themed math practice is also a great way to keep students engaged in skill practice!
Students can practice counting and one-to-one correspondence by coloring in the feathers on a turkey. This activity is great for math centers!
They can also practice creating groups of five by creating dinner plates with five Thanksgiving foods on each plate. Cutting and pasting adds fine motor practice to this math activity.
Another engaging way to practice skip counting is with this adorable paper plate turkey craft! Students will put the numbers in order as they count by ten.
Your class can also practice comparing numbers with a Thanksgiving twist! In this fun game, students will take turns flipping cards and will then add clips to a number line to decide which number is greater.
For some pattern practice, students can practice continuing and creating different pattern types in these printable Thanksgiving pattern mini books.
You can bring some tasty Thanksgiving fun to your math practice with a pumpkin pie graphing activity! Students can taste test pumpkin pie and vote on whether or not they like it. They can graph the results of the class vote and analyze the data.
This Thanksgiving craft makes a great keepsake to send home at the end of your thematic unit. After discussing as a class what it means to be thankful for something, students can write and illustrate a sentence about something they’re thankful for.
You can attach their completed writing to a large piece of construction paper. Add a cute poem and handprint turkey to create a keepsake Thanksgiving placemat!
If you’d like to add these thematic units to your lesson plans for November, check out this bundle! I have put together all of the activities you see above (and much more!) into one easy-to-download bundle.
To take a closer look at everything included in these thematic units, just click below to find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
If you’d like to come back to these November theme ideas later, be sure to save this post! Just add the pin below to your favorite board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these thematic units when you’re putting together your November lesson plans.
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
