In November, many PreK–2 classrooms turn to gratitude, family, sharing a meal and the fall harvest. In the United States, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November; in Canada, it comes earlier, on the second Monday of October. Either way, the season gives young children familiar words and pictures to count, sound out, read and write about.

This guide brings together simple Thanksgiving activities for preschool, kindergarten and 1st–2nd grade, one subject at a time: math, phonics and sight words, reading, writing, science, and calm coloring and crafts. Most take less than fifteen minutes, which helps during a short, busy week full of schedule changes.

Teaching Thanksgiving to Young Children

For PreK and kindergarten, focus on ideas children can relate to: being thankful, sharing a meal, helping at home and the fall harvest. Families celebrate in different ways, and some do not celebrate at all, so invite children to share what they do without expecting one kind of celebration. A “things I am grateful for” theme works for everyone and builds the same skills.

When the history comes up, keep it simple, accurate and respectful. The Wampanoag people lived in the area long before the English colonists arrived, and Wampanoag people still live there today. Avoid crafts or costumes that copy Native American clothing or headdresses, and focus on gratitude, sharing and harvest instead of a retold story that oversimplifies anyone.

Thanksgiving Math Activities

Thanksgiving math works best when children can see and touch what they count.

Favorite Food Graph (PreK–1)

Show a few food pictures (pie, corn, potatoes, rolls) and let each child vote with a sticky note or a cube. Count each column together, then ask which food has the most votes, which has the fewest and how many children voted in all.

Ten Frames With Harvest Counters (PreK–1)

Print pages with the free Ten Frame Worksheet Maker (to 10 or to 20, with answer keys). Children fill the frames with paper corn, leaf or pumpkin cut-outs before writing the number, and you ask: “How many more to make 10?”

Turkey Feather Number Bonds (K–2)

Give each child a paper turkey and paper feathers in two colors. “Your turkey has 5 feathers. 3 are red. How many are yellow?” This shows how one number is made of two parts. Kindergartners work within 5 or 10; 1st and 2nd graders can work with up to 20 feathers and write the matching addition or subtraction sentence.

Setting the Table (PreK–K)

Setting a pretend table is real-life math: one plate, one cup and one napkin for each person. Children practice one-to-one matching and count how many more plates are needed. Add positional words while you set it: the fork goes beside the plate and the napkin goes under the fork. Our guide to teaching positional words has more games like this.

More, Fewer and the Same (PreK–1)

Compare two baskets of harvest pictures and ask which has more. Kindergartners who are ready can use the words greater than and less than; see our Greater Than Less Than Worksheets and the article on how to teach greater than and less than.

Story Problems and Estimation (1st–2nd)

  • “There are 12 rolls in the basket. Our family eats 5. How many are left?”
  • “Grandma baked 2 pies. Each pie has 8 slices. How many slices in all?”
  • Fill a clear jar with acorns or dried corn, let children estimate, then count together by making groups of ten.

Thanksgiving Phonics and Sight Word Activities

Thanksgiving words are great for sound work, and many of them show up again in reading and writing later in the week.

Beginning Sounds, Syllables and Rhymes (PreK–K)

  • Beginning sounds: turkey /t/, pie /p/, leaf /l/, family /f/, corn /k/. Remind children that corn starts with the letter c but sounds like /k/.
  • Syllables: clap pie (1), turkey (2), pumpkin (2), Thanksgiving (3) and cranberry (3).
  • Rhymes: pie, tie and sky; corn and horn; yam and jam.

CVC Words (K–1)

Build yam, jam, pot, pan, nut and bun with letter cards, then read them together and use one in a sentence: “The jam is in the pan.”

Blends, Digraphs and Silent E (1st Grade)

By November, most 1st graders are moving past single letter sounds. Give a short list of Thanksgiving words, such as thankful, share, crunch, brown, bread, grateful and feast, and ask children to circle the blend or digraph in each one. For silent e, try plate, bake and grape. Then move from words to sentences: “We are thankful for our family.”

Sight Words

Sentence frames with Thanksgiving pictures make sight word practice meaningful:

  • “I am thankful for ___.”
  • “I can see the ___.”
  • “We like to eat ___.”

Children read the frame, add a word or picture and illustrate it. For games, type the week’s sight words into the free Bingo Card Maker, or make a puzzle with the Word Search Maker for kindergarten and 1st grade.

Thanksgiving Words A–Z

Use this list for word walls, word searches, bingo cards, beginning-sound sorts and writing centers. Choose a few words at a time for younger children.

  • A: apple pie, acorn, autumn
  • B: bread, basket, bake
  • C: corn, cranberry, cornucopia
  • D: dinner, dessert
  • E: eat, enjoy
  • F: family, feast, friends, fall
  • G: grateful, gravy, give
  • H: harvest, hay, help
  • I: invite
  • J: jam
  • K: kind, kitchen
  • L: leaves, love
  • M: mashed potatoes, maple
  • N: napkin, November
  • O: oven, oak
  • P: pumpkin pie, parade, plate
  • Q: quilt
  • R: rolls, rake
  • S: share, squash, stuffing
  • T: turkey, thankful, table
  • U: utensils
  • V: vegetables
  • W: wheat, warm
  • X: extra (the x is in the middle!)
  • Y: yams, yummy
  • Z: zucchini

Thanksgiving Reading Activities

Keep the reading level right for each child; a passage that is too hard will frustrate a young reader no matter how festive the pictures are.

  • PreK and early kindergarten: use picture walks and read-alouds. Ask “What do you see?” and “What is the turkey doing?”
  • Kindergarten and early 1st grade: use one or two sentences per page with strong picture support and repeated sight words.
  • 1st and 2nd grade: use slightly longer passages so children can find details and answer who, what and where questions.

After reading, mix question types: what happened (“What did the family eat?”), order (“What happened first? What happened next?”), connection (“What would you want on your table?”) and vocabulary (“What does harvest mean?”).

Retelling is one of the most useful skills to practice at this age. Have children draw the beginning, middle and end, retell with “First… Then… Finally…”, or act out a short story. Retelling also works as a listening activity for children who are not reading yet. For word work, children can label a picture of a Thanksgiving table with words from the A–Z list.

Thanksgiving Writing and Gratitude Activities

For PreK and kindergarten, “writing” might mean drawing a picture and labeling it. For 1st and 2nd grade, it can mean full sentences or a short paragraph. The same topic works for every stage.

  • Thankful journal. Each day, children draw or write one thing they are thankful for. Preschoolers dictate, kindergartners label, 1st graders write a sentence and 2nd graders add a reason with “because.”
  • Class gratitude book. Every child makes one page, and you read the finished book together. The free Our Class Is a Family pack fits this well, and our article on building a classroom family has more community ideas.
  • Thank-you notes. Children write or draw a thank-you card for a school helper, such as the cook, the bus driver or the custodian.
  • A small story (1st–2nd). Give a simple structure such as “First… Then… Finally…” so children can write about a family meal or a favorite fall day without facing a blank page.

Offer a word bank of Thanksgiving words for spelling support, let children draw before they write, and keep expectations realistic: writing stamina is still developing in November. To celebrate effort, print a kindness or helper award for every child with the free Certificate & Award Maker. For another November lesson about saying thank you, our Veterans Day activities connect thankfulness and service in a way young children understand.

Simple Harvest Science

By late November, many classrooms are already talking about the harvest, the weather and where food comes from. Keep science concrete: things children can see, sort and describe.

Where Food Comes From

Show real foods or pictures and trace each one back to the plant it grows on. Sort them by plant part: carrots are roots, lettuce is leaves, and corn kernels are seeds. Here is a fact children love: to a scientist, a pumpkin is a fruit, because it grows from a flower and holds seeds.

Cranberry Sink or Float

Put cranberries and dried corn kernels in a clear bowl of water and ask children to predict what will happen first. Cranberries float because they have small pockets of air inside, which is why some farms flood their fields to harvest them. An adult can cut one cranberry in half so children can look for the air pockets with a magnifying glass.

Pumpkin Investigation

Let children hold a pumpkin and guess its weight, measure around it with yarn and draw what they think is inside. After an adult cuts it open, children can scoop and count seeds. The Pumpkin Life Cycle Worksheets add parts-of-a-pumpkin and life cycle pages for kindergarten and 1st grade, and our guide to the pumpkin life cycle explains each stage. For a craft, the Life Cycle Crafts Bundle includes pumpkin and apple life cycles.

Weather, Daylight and Animals

Talk about how the weather and daylight have changed since the start of the school year, and how animals get ready for winter: many birds fly to warmer places, and squirrels store food.

Adjust the recording to the grade: kindergartners match pictures and label; 1st graders add a sentence about what they observed; 2nd graders compare two foods or seasons using what they saw. An adult should always handle any cutting, and check for food allergies before children touch or taste foods.

Coloring, Crafts and Calm Moments

Thanksgiving week often brings visitors, parties and schedule changes. A quiet coloring page or craft helps children settle, and it builds fine motor control at the same time.

  • Add learning to coloring. Ask children to count the pumpkins or leaves on the page, name the colors they use, or dictate one sentence about their picture. The Fall Coloring Pages | Fall Math Coloring Sheets combine fall pictures with counting, ten frames and comparing for PreK–K, so they work in November as well as October. Our guide to using fall coloring pages for early math has teacher prompts for each skill.
  • Name placemats. The free Name Coloring Page Maker turns your class list into bubble-letter name pages. Choose the Fall design and use them as placemats for a class meal.
  • Gratitude chain. Each child writes or draws one thing they are thankful for on a paper strip; link the strips into a chain and count the links together.
  • Leaf rubbings. Place real leaves under paper and rub with the side of a crayon.

Quick Printables From Free PreKPrints Tools

Keep Learning Steady During a Short Week

A few short Thanksgiving activities, built around the skills your class is already practicing, keep learning steady during a short, busy week. Browse more ideas in our seasonal activities, math activities, literacy activities and science activities collections.