Turkey Trot (Preschool)

Opening: Big Books

Book: Nanette’s Baguette (With real bread for prop)

*For this book, I bought a long loaf of bread, and cut it up into four pieces. I had my volunteer help me read this book. As you read along, Nanette can't help herself and eats the baguette! As I was reading, my volunteer would break a piece of bread off and put it behind her on a plate. This would represent the piece of bread that Nanette had eaten in the story. I would tell the kids to let me know when my bread was being eaten, and they certainly did! The next time I use this story I will buy a much smaller loaf or just a piece of bread so that we can actually eat the bread and not just put the bread behind us on a plate.

File Folder: Turkey Hunt

*This is such an adorable file folder story, and the kids got very excited seeing the turkey change colors before them. Here is where I found this.

Book: 10 Fat Turkeys (With ten turkeys as props)

*The kids loved shaking around as I read the same stanza through the book, gobble gobble, wibble wobble! I also had ten turkeys propped up on the puppet stage, and as each turkey disappeared, one turkey would fly away behind me. The kids found that very amusing! Below is a picture of what some of our turkeys looked like that we had propped up behind me.

Dancing: Shake Your Sillies Out!

*Since our turkeys danced around I decided that we needed to do a little dancing ourselves!

Fingerplay/Flannel: “Turkey, Turkey”

Turkey, turkey, come and play.

What color house are you in today?

*As usual, the kids went crazy telling me what color house to look behind for our turkey. Here is the website where I found this adorable game!

Action: Feeding Animals

*Click here to see what we did for this activity.

Game: Food guessing game APP

*The kids had a lot of fun guessing what food I was showing them.

*For the craft today, the kids got to make their own turkey finger puppet, which is below. Here is the website where the idea came from.

Games:

Scarecrow Knockdown

Normally this is the favorite game, but today I think all the other games won out over this one.

Pumpkin Soup Dipping

This was one of the top games. I took our big pot and filled it up with water. Then I dumped foam gourds, pumpkins and acorns that came from the dollar store inside. After that, the kids could scoop out the items and put them in our big bowl to make pumpkin soup! Next time I think I'll have out two pots for them to scoop things out of, it was such a big hit.

Letter Matching

This was also one of the top games. I found the free download for this letter matching game here. I didn't have room on my table to place all the letters of the alphabet, so I decided to spell out storytime. I wanted to make this into a sensory bin, so I hid the acorns inside a bowl of leaves. I taped down the squirrels to the table, and then the kids got to dig out the acorns and match them up to the correct squirrel. They really enjoyed this and I am now on the hunt for the next game!

Turkey Feather Matching

The kids really enjoyed doing this game also. I found the template for this matching game here. We decided to do pom-poms, since they've worked out well for us in the past.

Extra Read-Alouds:

Bear Says Thanks

Dinnertime for Chickies

Lemons Are Not Red

Little Mouse and the Big Cupcake

Mouse Who Reached the Sky

Nanette’s Baguette

Peanut Butter and Jelly by Westcott

Please Say Please!

Run, Turkey, Run!

Thank You! By Ethan Long

10 Fat Turkeys

10 Turkeys in the Road

That’s Not Bunny!

Thanksgiving Graces

Thanksgiving Rules

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey!

Ugly Pumpkin

What’s For Lunch?