Thanksgiving Math Activities

Thanksgiving is a holiday that naturally provides opportunities to talk about math, both because it’s a food holiday generally and because there is usually pie, and we all love delicious fractions. Check out these Thanksgiving math activities to get ready for the holiday with a side of learning.

As you might imagine, a lot of these activities do, in fact, have a pie theme. Like the pumpkin pie number sense printables from 123 Homeshool 4 Me, which show the numeral, the number on a domino, in stick form (for counting tick marks) and that number of pumpkins. Give the child a couple of numbers at a time and have them find all the pieces of the pie with the same number represented.

Or try the pumpkin pie count and trace activity from Preschool Play and Learn. This one has printable pie pieces with the word for a number the kids can trace. Use cotton balls as whipped cream or marshmallows on top to count out the number, or use other counters you have on hand.

And of course there’s the classic paper plate pie fraction activity, like this one from Creative Family Fun. Here the plates are painted to look like pumpkin pie but you can decorate them however you like.

Roll and count to add turkey feathers to the turkey with this activity from Fun a Day. You’ll need to do a little prep work but it’s really cute and a fun way to practice counting.

Kindergarten Worksheets and Games has some really cute color by addition coloring pages for kids who are ready for basic math.

Playdough to Plato’s Thanksgiving math activity includes printable coins kids can use to “buy” the ingredients for their meal, and you can also use them to work on adding two-digit numbers (if only a turkey were really 17 cents!).

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Pumpkin STEM Activities for Kids

With summer coming soon in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s a fun time to incorporate activities and crafts with a sunny theme. Take some time to learn about the sun (this post from National Geographic Kids is a good one) and then do some sun activities.

Sun prints are a classic summer activity, and there are lots of ways to do them, from placing objects on construction paper (like in this craft from MomBrite) or by using sun print paper (aka cyanotype paper).

Practice threading, counting, color sorting and other skills with this easy sun threading activity from Taming Little Monsters.

Lessons 4 Little Ones has a great blog post full of ideas for science experiments using the sun, such as melting crayons, looking at shadows, making a sun dial and trying a solar oven. Printables to go with the lessons are available for purchase or you can just talk through the students’ hypotheses about what will happen and draw or otherwise record the results.

This updraft tower from Almost Unschoolers is a cool way to illustrate that the heat of the sun causes an updraft, which makes the pinwheel spin. This is a good one to do inside near a sunny window so you don’t have wind spinning the pinwheel instead.

You’ll want to get out in the sun to try this experiment form Life with Moore Babies to see what kinds of things the sun can melt. Using different kinds of sweets you can see how the sun melts things by itself and how you can concentrate the power of the sun with a magnifying glass.

Playing with shadows is fun for kids of all ages, and you can track a shadow through the day with this experiment from Science Sparks. If you’re working with multiple kids they can each choose an object to shadow (ha!) and at the end of the day you can see how different their shadows looked.

And of course you’ll want to make a sun themed suncatcher craft, right? This one from Fox Farm Home uses all the pretty flowers you collect on your nature walk and puts them in a sun-shaped frame.

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