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Thanksgiving Centers- Submitted by Sherry
Stuff your centers with these Thanksgiving Ideas to k eep your little ones gobbling!
Building Area:
Provide a set of interlocking building logs, crafts sticks, clay, and broom straw for building Pilgrims' homes. Be sure to have books showing pictures of the Pilgrim's clapboard houses for children to use as reference.
Manipulative Area:
Add fruit, vegetables and turkey puzzles. Put out red, yellow and orange play dough along with leaf and fruit shaped cookie cutters. Include a tub of colored macaroni pieces and yarn lengths for making a Native American necklaces.
Writing Center:
Add stencils of fruits, vegetables and a cornucopia. Look for fruit scented markers for writing, tracing and coloring. Put up a chart of Native American symbols for children to copy. Include theme related vocabulary cards, such as pumpkin, turkey, feather and family.
Housekeeping Area:
Cover the take with a tablecloth that has a Thanksgiving motif. Place a cornucopia full of plastic fruits and vegetables in the center of the table. Provide plenty of plates, cups and napkins, and encourage children to set the table for a specific number of guests. Stock the kitchen shelves with real, unopened cans of food. Provide aprons for the cook of this great feast.
Painting Center:
Set out paint in fall colors. Add lemon extract to the yellow paint, cinnamon spice to the brown and pumpkin spice to the orange. Encourage students to use vegetable and fruit halves to make prints.
Discovery Center:
Peel, core and cut two apples into 1/8 inch slices. String the slices from one apple. Soak the other slices in lemon juice before stringing. Let students observe the apples for several days to see which slices turn browner. Eat the dried apple slices at snacktime one day. Do they taste different than regular apple slices.
Game Center:
Look for a turkey shaped notepad. On each of five sheets, draw a different set of dots from one to five. Label each of five more sheets with different numeral from one to five. Encourage students to match the numeral turkeys to the correct dotted turkeys.
Art Center:
Add feathers, pinecones and wiggle eyes for making turkeys. Bring in a collection of real, colorful leaves to glue on paper plates rings for beauriful fall wreathes. Have strips of construction paper and take available for students to use in making their own Native American headbands.
Sand/Water Table:
Fill the table with large bag of popped popcorn or with leaves. Encourage students to experiment with a bowl of m ixed nuts and water to see which nuts float and which nuts sink. Add plastic fruits, vegetables, bowls, salad tongs, pots and wooden spoons so children can make vegetable soup or fruit salad
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