Today is the last day of writing class before we take off a week to celebrate Thanksgiving, so I wanted to do something fun and “Thanksgiving-y” with the kids. In our class, we have my three kiddos (7,9, and 11) and my friend’s three kiddos (9, 11, 11). I went to Scholastic’s website and found some fun ideas for talking about Thanksgiving.
My favorite is the “I am not a turkey” writing assignment. Scholastic has a printable ‘naked’ turkey that the kids decorate in a disguise. Then they can write a short story about their turkey, who is trying to convince the reader that he/she is NOT a turkey!
First, I gave each of the kids their very own fuzzy turkey, which I think I found on Oriental Trading several years ago. Then I gave them the sad news that some families wanted to eat their turkeys for Thanksgiving! ;).
They were so excited to draw disguises on their naked turkeys, and they all came up with some really fun stories about their turkeys–from being Wolverine to being a ballerina! From a writing teacher’s perspective, it was great to have them put themselves into a character’s shoes and try to imagine what they would say. Even my reluctant writer had fun with this assignment!
For added inspiration, we whipped up a batch of these pumpkin chocolate chip cookies from Sally’s Baking Addiction–YUM! I think I got the amount if butter wrong, so mine don’t look quite as good as hers, but they are SO SO yummy!!
Of course, the recipe only used a few Tablespoons of pumpkin and I couldn’t waste the rest, so I made some cream cheese pumpkin muffins, also from Sally’s site, (recipe here) and a pumpkin latte. 🙂 That should tide us over until Thanksgiving! 🙂