Thanksgiving Preschool: Learning about Pilgrims

Today at preschool we learned all about Pilgrims.  See here for another Thanksgiving lesson.

We got the lesson started with the counting box activity when our little turkey lost all his feathers. 
The kids had to count the feathers, then reattach them in order.  I was surprised at how good they already were at their number recognition skills.  

 Then we read a couple of cute books. One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims is a great simple story about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.  10 Fat Turkeys is just fun and good for counting down from ten, which a couple of the kids really caught onto and a couple did not.   We also learned to sing "One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims"  to the tune of Ten Little Indians.

 

Then I told  them a little flannel board story about the Pilgrims which completely captured their attention.  They were so interested that I spent 5-10 minutes telling them far more detail than I had ever intended and was totally surprised when later on during preschool they could easily retell the story back to me.  

We went for a ride on the "Mayflower" and went searching for a land where we could worship God they way we wanted. 

We painted little turkeys starting with their own footprints

 

 

and later made little turkeys out of apples. 

Then we made these cute little wooden Pilgrim puppets out of wooden spatulas.  I attached the felt hats and pipe cleaner arms with hot glue and had the kids make their own faces.  It was pretty simple, but they really like the end product. 

After that we did these little Thanksgiving books together (from Enchanted Learning).  I wrote the main word in the blank and the kids either copied or traced it.  Afterward they colored whatever they could.  They seem to really enjoy the fun writing practice. 

It was one of those days that reminds me why I love doing co-op preschool so much!