Thanksgiving Lessons and Activities

The Thanksgiving holiday can be used in the classroom as a hook for many different learning activities. You can start by offering a little bit of the history surrounding celebrating Thanksgiving in America. Begin by talking about how it has been traditionally considered a festival to give thanks for the harvest, the natural extension from this topic is to offer everyone a chance to give thanks for the good things that have happened during the year. With this in mind, teachers will find that Thanksgiving is a holiday that can lead to many teachable moments.

Introduce Writing to Younger Learners

With young children, teachers can read books about being thankful. This will help learners to get their thoughts flowing. From there, in small groups (if you have an aide or parent helper), or as a class, brainstorm things for which each person is thankful. You can also do this in two or three shorter sessions. Either way, it models the idea of brainstorming to your young writers. You can also model this idea by starting your own list of things you are thankful for, and then having students give you ideas to add to the list.

Once the list is completed, have pupils choose several things from the list to include in a writing assignment. They can complete a graphic organizer that models how the writing piece is to be built or structured. The first paragraph should introduce the topic "Things I am thankful for" or something similar. Your young writers can then describe the things they are thankful for from their list, and also tell why they are thankful for these things. The second paragraph should discuss each event from the list in detail, and why they are important to them. This is where the graphic organizer will support their writing. The graphic organizer will help the pupil organize her ideas, and it will also help her to ensure that she remembered to include everything she brainstormed. The third paragraph should be where her thoughts are developed. More in-depth, stronger reasoning for why she is thankful for certain things or people. Or, you can have learners use the third paragraph to explain why Thanksgiving is an important holiday.

Develop Older Students’ Writing

Middle and high schoolers can use this as their main topic: Thanksgiving is an important holiday to celebrate. This age level can discuss and analyze the relevance of the Thanksgiving holiday to our contemporary lives. Make the assignment cross-curricular by asking learners to research and write about the lives of the Native Americans and their traditions. This research can lead into a study of the lives of the European settlers who immigrated to America, and how their lives differed from the lives of the Native Americans. They can also compare and contrast various time periods in America, and how Thanksgiving has been celebrated throughout the years, or how traditions have changed over time. Using this research, they can develop presentations. For public speaking practice, plan time for students to present their findings to the class, or to a younger grade level class.

Creative Writing for Any Age

Teachers can also build units around the Thanksgiving holiday that require students to write a diary entry that comes from the perspective of a Native American child or a Pilgrim child. Depending on grade level, diary entries can be simple or complex. For this assignment, be specific as to what you want included in the letter. Do you want details of the child’s dwelling? Food? Daily schedule? With a little bit of direction, kids get very creative when writing diary entries. Give it a try!

Here are some more lesson plans to get you started on combining writing with Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving Lessons and Activities:

The First Thanksgiving 

Pupils travel back in time to Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. They discover how the Native Americans and the Pilgrims taught each other new skills so that their lives would be more plentiful. Each learner becomes a character from this time period. They research the character and then write a biography for the character they are assigned.

American Thanksgiving Through Time

Scholars explore five websites in order to identify the various ways Thanksgiving has been celebrated in the past, and how it is celebrated today. They consider the diversity of United States, and how this affects celebrations of this day.

Thanksgiving: Multiple Perspectives

Learners examine the different perspectives on Thanksgiving celebrations in Plymouth. They create a landmark that shows both the Native American and European views on colonizing America. To finish, they present their landmarks to the class.

Thanksgiving: A Celebration of Gratitude

Pupils complete a unit about Thanksgiving that is centered on the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians. They read and discuss books, create a mural, complete a worksheet about five blessings in their life, prepare recipes from the first Thanksgiving, and construct and play a Native American game.