12 Days of Thanksgiving - Day 4

Days of Thanksgiving

I've always loved these ideas that extend through multiple days to celebrate the holiday seasons (did you catch my 13 Days of Halloween posts?). This year I found ideas for the 12 Days of Thanksgiving and I couldn't resist sharing them with you. The ideas in this post came from a very vintage magazine called Copycat Press from 1990 (which just doesn't feel like it should be labeled very vintage, but I suppose that's because I am very vintage myself!) 

The ideas are centered around using the poetry from It's Thanksgiving by Jack Prelutsky. I didn't have this book in our Club library, but I did find a few versions of read alouds online. Here's the one that includes the entire book (which is helpful since you'll use different poems each day).

Fourth Day of Thanksgiving
Here's a poem that's short and bittersweet! Ask a member to read aloud the poem "If Turkeys Thought." Point out the rhyming style and the humor that Prelutsky uses in his poetry. Challenge the group to create their own rhyming poems entitled "If I Were a Turkey." Have the group brainstorm a list of words that could be used in the poems. Here are some rhyming words that may be included:

Members may choose to write their poems as a small group or individually. After they have written the poems, invite them to share them with the group. If you have extra time, you might have the kids illustrate the poems they wrote.

Additional Idea: After sharing this poem with the children, invite them to color and cut out the turkey pattern above and glue it to construction paper. Then have them write turkey escape thoughts on speech bubble cut outs. For example "I'm going to pack my bags and catch the nest plane out of here!"). Ask children to glue the speech bubbles to their turkey patterns.