As you prepare for the holiday season, having meaningful, low-prep resources at your fingertips makes all the difference. This Thanksgiving preschool pack gives you everything you need to keep your little learners engaged while exploring gratitude, fall fun, and important early learning skills.
Whether you’re teaching in the classroom or at home, you’ll love how easy it is to bring this festive theme to life without the overwhelm of planning it all yourself. Below you’ll find tons of activities and tips!
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Fall Theme Sensory Bin
One of the easiest ways to add excitement and hands-on learning to your preschool week is with a themed sensory bin. So many of the activities in our Thanksgiving Preschool pack incorporate a sensory bin, so it’s best to knock out the preparation early on! Our Fall sensory bin is always a hit—it’s simple to put together and offers tons of playful learning opportunities! Here’s how I like to set ours up!
FIRST, gather your materials. I like to use a plastic storage bin with a lid so I can cover and store the bin once it’s prepared. Choose your filler, like the dry oats we use in ours. Something about the oats really makes all the Fall colors in our Thanksgiving theme POP and gives children a very unique texture to experience. Once you’ve chosen your filler, fill your storage bin as much as you feel comfortable with (knowing each individual child can handle working with different amounts of materials).
NEXT, grab some extra Fall themed items like plastic apples and pumpkins, faux leaves, colorful pompoms, etc. These items make the perfect backdrop for the printable items in our preschool Fall pack! Scatter them throughout your sensory bin filler and watch the theme really come to life!
FINALLY, choose a space that you feel comfortable using the sensory bin with your child. I tuck ours away in our homeschool room with the rest of our Preschool manipulatives, and keep our sensory bin blanket nearby for when it’s time to get to work. The rule with our bins – everything stays on the blanket! This makes clean up SO much easier.
READY, SET, PLAY!!! When your sensory bin is not being used for the printable activities in our Thanksgiving Preschool theme, allow children to explore freely! Watch them scoop, pour, dig, and more! I love taking our bin our when I need a little extra quiet time for homeschooling an older child, or honestly if I just need an extra minute to sip my hot coffee!
Thanksgiving Preschool Theme Overview
This Thanksgiving Preschool theme is sure to give your little learners TONS of fun practice! Children will have 15 center-style activities to choose from – 5 Math, 5 Literacy and 5 Fine Motor centers. In addition, I’ve included book recommendations for 5 Thanksgiving theme picture books and links to their read aloud videos on YouTube!
To use these printables, you can follow the PRE-MADE lesson plans for a week full of fun! Each of the 5 pre-planned days your students will have 1 read aloud, 1 Math activity, 1 Literacy activity, and 1 Fine Motor activity to work on. This is a great pace for little learners! But if you’d like to spread the activities out or rearrange them according your own child’s needs, simply print our provided Build-Your-Own Plans page and make your own plans!
PS See how we use this theme in our Preschool scope and sequence by grabbing our FREE Preschool Curriculum Map below!
Math Activities
This set of printables has 5 fun Thanksgiving Preschool theme activities for practicing early Math skills. Children will practice number formation, number identification, counting, colors, and shapes. Our Preschool activities always include the use of small manipulatives for added fine motor skills practice!
One of my favorite Thanksgiving theme Math activities is the activity shown above! To use, children choose pumpkin pie number cards from their sensory bin and identify the numbers on the card. Then they’ll find the matching number on the mat and trace it, continuing until all of the numbers have been traced!
Want to extend this activity? Once children identify identify each number on their cards, guide them in counting up to that number and showing it using their fingers to help them connect the numbers to their amounts!
Literacy Activities
In addition to the Math centers, this set includes 5 early Thanksgiving Preschool Literacy activities! Children will practice skills like letter identification, letter formation, beginning sounds, and handwriting practice with Thanksgiving theme vocabulary words!
One of my favorite Literacy activities from our Thanksgiving theme is the one shown above. To use, children choose pumpkin pie cards from their sensory bin and identify the letters on them. Then they use cotton balls as “whipped cream toppings” to cover the matching lowercase letters until all of the letters are covered!
Ready to extend this activity? Once children identify the letters on the cards, guide them in identifying the sounds the letters make and even coming up with words beginning with those sounds!
Fine Motor Activities
When working with little learners, strengthening fine motor skills is a must! Our 5 Thanksgiving theme fine motor activities will have your children working hard and having TONS of fun! They will practice matching using clothespins, mold using play dough, trace using manipulatives, and so much more!
One of my very favorite fine motor activities is this matching mat! To use, children choose turkey cards from the sensory bin and identify the emotion on the card. Then find and cover the match on the mat, continuing until all of the turkeys are covered!
Want a fun way to extend the activity? Guide children in replicating the faces they see on the turkeys and even discussing what types of events might cause those emotions! We also like to discuss how to work through the various emotions appropriately.
And… I lesson planned FOR YOU!
This set of activities (and all of the other 45+ sets in our FULL Preschool Curriculum) include a full week of print and go visual lesson plans! It shows you exactly which books and printables to use each day for a 5-day school week, making lesson planning an absolute breeze!
Want to build your own? Or maybe your kiddos are ready for some of the activities but not all of them? That’s great! Use the included Build Your Own lesson plans page! These thematic centers were designed with growing learners ages 2.5 to 5 years old in mind, so this lesson planning page allows you to choose which activities your child is ready for right now!
More November fun!
Ready to learn with your toddlers or Preschoolers ALL MONTH LONG?! You can save TONS when you grab this set of centers in our November Preschool Curriculum! The bundle includes 3 engaging November themes (like Thanksgiving, Fall Festival, and more!), complete with a week of lesson plans for each! You’ll also get 25 NO PREP Thanksgiving themed fine motor skills worksheets and crafts, and 38 NO PREP Math and Literacy worksheets for extended practice!
Let’s hang out!
I hope this post helped you get a better look at our Thanksgiving Theme Preschool activities! Got questions? Let me know! I’d love to chat and get to know you better! You can find us below in some of our favorite places to hang out. Can’t wait to chat with you about your Preschooler’s learning journey!
SAVE THIS POST FOR LATER!
Was this post about our Thanksgiving Preschool theme helpful? Make sure you can come back to this post as much as you need by saving it for later on Pinterest! Click the image below to save this pin to your Thanksgiving Preschool Activities board! Then, CLICK HERE to read about more of our favorite Thanksgiving themed activities!
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