$50 gift card giveaway!

Join me in prepping for the TeachersPayTeachers site wide sale by entering this gift card giveaway!






a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanksgiving book round up

If you teach elementary school, chances are good that you love children's books!  If you teach elementary school in the US, you probably love, have, need, and use Thanksgiving picture books.  Here are a few of my favorites!

It's Thanksgiving, by Jack Prelutsky.  My students have always loved Jack Prelutsky's poems, but his holiday collections are some of our favorites!  I got this way back when it came with the book on tape, and we STILL read and sing along to these songs/poems.

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving - a classic Thanksgiving story about a class field trip to the farm that turns into a rescue mission. 

Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano has a predictable problem, a variety of turkey disguises, and a creative solution.  If you do a disguise a turkey activity, this book is a perfect lead in.

Have you met We Gather Together... Now Please Get Lost! and other books by Diane deGroat?  Students will relate to the class dynamics, to students doing their best to get along but struggling at times.  There's always a lot of humor in deGroat's books that cleverly disguises a lesson on friendship and getting along. 

The Most Thankful Thing is perhaps better for a family reading than a classroom story, as a parent reveals that her little one is her most thankful thing, but this story also lends itself to making lists of the things we are thankful for, and ties in beautifully with this Thanksgiving activity that I do each year.

In The Great Turkey Race 3 bird brained turkeys compete to be the most special turkey, the one that will be chosen for Thanksgiving... fortunately, all works out well in the end.

Over the River is the classic Thanksgiving song that you already know, love and sing along to, with adorable turkeys acting out the story.  This is a fun way to teach or practice the song with your kiddos!

Do your students get excited about sharks, saber toothed tigers, t-rex and piranhas?  I bet you weren't expecting them to show up in a Thanksgiving book, yet here they are in Who Will Carve the Turkey This Thanksgiving?,  just right to engage the 4 and 5 year old crowd. 

10 Fat Turkeys  This turkey count down book is adorable, every turkey has it's own personality, and the recurring phrase "GOBBLE GOBBLE WIBBLE WOBBLE" will have your students joining in as you read.  Unlike a lot of Thanksgiving stories for the primary grades, there's no mention of turkey dinner at all.

There are some book series that I've collected a lot of, and the Arthur series by Marc Brown is one of them.  Arthur's Thanksgiving engages my first graders, and with Muffy saying things like "Vomitrocious", it keeps me entertained too.  As always, Arthur and friends learn something important along the way.

I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie - it's not what you might expect, it's a hundred times better!  The text is great, but the illustrations by Judith Byron Schachner are priceless!

So what is YOUR favorite Thanksgiving book?  Let me know what I missed in the comments, and have a very happy Thanksgiving!