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Thanksgiving Language Arts Printables

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There are lots of great language arts printables with a Thanksgiving theme, including lots of little books, writing activities and more. Let’s check out some Thanksgiving themed learning for the classroom or at home.

Fun a Day has a cute printable emergent reader Thanksgiving book (find more fall emergent readers books here), which features a turkey and different color words, so kids can color the bird appropriately on each page. 

Printablee has a collection of 10 different printable Thanksgiving stories for different grade levels, and A Little Pinch of Perfect has a short printable book with pilgrims and Native Americans that could be the beginning of telling the Thanksgiving story.

Kindergarten Smarts has a printable sight word book with a holiday twist. There are a few different variations on the book for different readers, and you can get them from her Teachers Pay Teachers site.

Get printable Thanksgiving themed writing prompts with a coloring element at 123 Homeschool 4 Me. These pages include things like what kids would do if they had a pet turkey at Thanksgiving, what they know about the pilgrims and their favorite Thanksgiving foods. This reminds me of an activity the first or second graders always do at my daughter’s school, where they imagine a turkey has to disguise itself to avoid being eaten, then they draw it and write about it.

The Keeper of the Memories has fun color by sight word printables with a turkey, pie and cornucopia on them so kids can practice basic words while they color.

The Thanksgiving word search from PJs and Paint would be better for kids who’ve moved beyond emergent reading since it has several long words, but for kids who love word searches this is a good one.

Looking for more Thanksgiving learning activities? Check out my collection of Thanksgiving math activities.

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Christmas STEM Projects

Holidays are a great time to pull in some themed STEM projects. Even kids who aren’t usually into science can get excited about making a reindeer fly or making a Christmas tree out of 3D shapes. Check out these fun Christmas STEM activities to try in your classroom or at home.

Speaking of making reindeer fly, there are lots of different takes on this engineering challenge. In the instructions from The Educator’s Spin on it, kids make a reindeer from recycled materials, then use a string to make it “fly.” You can also do this with a balloon, like in this version from Team Cartwright.

And that Christmas tree project? That one is from Steamsational, and it calls for making a bunch of 3D triangles you then assemble into a tree. The post includes all the tips you’ll need and a printable template for making the triangles.

Another cute idea from Steamsational is making Santa’s sleigh out of an egg carton. Give kids design challenges such as that Santa must stay in the sleigh, it should be able to move and pull weight. It’s so fun to see what kids come up with.

Science Sparks has a printable book full of Christmas-themed experiments with templates kids can cut out and use to make spinning sleighs, shadow puppets, a paper tube to test how much weight it can hold and more. These activities are really low prep beyond the printing, so they’re great when you need to fill a little time at home or at school.

If you have Legos and jingle bells you can make a simple engineering challenge by having kids build mazes that the bells can roll through. Get the details from Innovation Kids Lab. (And check out this fun book of Lego Christmas ornaments!)

Of course you can also put a Christmas spin on classic STEM activities, like making a baking soda volcano in a plastic or glass ball ornament (Little Bins for Little Hands), red and green magic milk (Fun Learning for Kids), Borax crystal ornaments (Go Science Kids) and more!

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