Thanksgiving is just around the corner! Are you ready? I know that many of us are working on incorporating more technology and digital activities in our classrooms. So, I have rounded up a variety of virtual Thanksgiving activities for you!
Thanksgiving Educational Videos
To begin, Scholastic is a great place for digital Thanksgiving Activities! Here, you will find K-2 and 3-5 lesson plans and activities. Also, there are virtual tours and educational videos. It is the perfect place to start instruction or to add to your students’ independent learning.
On the other hand, BrainPop, Jr. is a good source for a simple Thanksgiving video and activities. I have always found that BrainPop, Jr. is easy for younger kiddos to understand. In this video, Annie and Moby talk about the origins of Thanksgiving. Students will learn about pilgrims, the Mayflower, and the Wampanoag. Additionally, Annie discusses the first Thanksgiving!
Directed Drawing for Thanksgiving
Directed drawings are always a fun activity! Not only do students love these, but teachers do, too! A directed drawing is a perfect addition to your digital Thanksgiving activities because it can be done from school or at home! Simply assign your students the link to a directed drawing video!
Directed drawings are not just time-fillers. Students will be practicing listening skills, following directions, art elements, creativity, and more! Their drawings can even be hung on display in your classroom. Or, at home on their refrigerator. I have linked three great directed drawing videos below.
Digital Reading Activities for Thanksgiving
Firstly, if you’re teaching your kiddos all about turkeys, this is the activity for you! The interactive flip book includes reading, writing, and comprehension elements. This product helps teach about what turkeys are like. For example, passage introduces what turkeys are, how their bodies are, and what their diet consists of. There are follow up comprehension activities for the passage, too. Students will simply pull it up on Google Slides, and manipulate the elements with their mouse and keyboard. Grab yours with the buttons below.
Secondly, these digital Thanksgiving activities are engaging, themed, reading passages. They are a perfect tool to use to help students practice their comprehension. In this product, you will find five Thanksgiving stories with 2 skill-specific comprehension activities for each. One of the comprehension pages deals with answering questions about the text and the other deals with writing a response based on the passage.
Now that this product is digital, students can complete the story and comprehension activities and simply submit them to you! No more paper grading!
This November-themed product comes with 5 paired passage sets! The great thing about this resource is that each set comes with a nonfiction text and a fiction story. So, students will be applying their skills to both text types, with comprehension questions and activities for both.
- Thanksgiving & Our New Thanksgiving
- Election Day & Classroom Elections
- Veterans Day & There is My Uncle
- Black Friday & Lost in the Mall
- Turkeys & The Adventures of Ted and Tina
Interactive Games with a Thanksgiving Theme
If you’d like to add some fun to your digital Thanksgiving activities, go no further than ABCya! Here, they have many Thanksgiving-themed interactive games. For example, this one, Gobble Squabble, is a Thanksgiving activity to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division math facts! Solve math problems and avoid the hungry chefs. Students love this game!
Likewise, ABCya’s Thanksgiving Crossword Puzzle is a fun and interactive way for kids to test their knowledge of Thanksgiving vocabulary words and facts. The crossword puzzle can be played on the computer or by printing on paper. The interactive version of the puzzle includes a hint feature, fun animations, and an intuitive interface to making navigating the clues and answers simple!
Learn About Native American Tribes
This Native Americans Unit has vocabulary, math, social studies, reading, and writing activities. The unit will help teach your students about different Native American tribes. This will include regions, tools, early homes, and traditions.
Moreover, these digital Thanksgiving activities can be easily assigned to students. For instance, they can be shared simply via link. Then, they open in Google Slides and students can complete them right there! The resource has vocabulary cards, a mini-book, reading and writing activities, a research task, math, and ELA pages, and more!
Don’t Forget Thanksgiving Read Alouds Over Meet or Zoom!
Meanwhile, don’t forget about read alouds! Pre-recording yourself reading a book can be a great way for students to practice their listening comprehension. Or, find a someone else’s version on YouTube! Kiddos love hearing stories being read and having a video will allow them to hear stories again and again! These 5 Thanksgiving picture books are my favorite to read aloud to students!
- There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey by Lucile Colandro
- How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace and Andy Elkerton
- The Great Thanksgiving Escape by Mark Fearing
- Thanksgiving in the Woods by Phyllis Alsdurf
- Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet
Add In a Fun Brain Break
Lastly, If your kiddos enjoy brain breaks, GoNoodle has a silly Maraca Turkey dance! OR you can have your student dance to Gobble Gobble Turkey Wobble by Koo Koo Kangaroo!
Here are a few suggested resources for Thanksgiving!
These resources can be easily added to your digital Thanksgiving activities. Each of these products has a digital format already included! To take a closer look, click the links below.
Links:
- Turkeys Reading Flip Book
- November Paired Passages
- Thanksgiving Fiction Passages
- Native American Social Studies Unit
