Thanksgiving activity...what?

I know what you're thinking...

"Thanksgiving?  In December?"

But, I haven't found the motivation to write about the ONE Thanksgiving activity I got to do until now.  And really, I should be sleeping.  I have to get up in 7ish hours and drive 7.5 hours to northern Mississippi (pray for me y'all).

Anyway...

because I am now ESE, it's hard for me to do anything extra.  I have a set reading series that I MUST follow.  And I do love it, and it does work...so I'm really not complaining.  I also am trying to fit in all of the grade level math standards, and the standards from previous years that my kiddos don't understand.  So, anything extra is not gonna fly.

Luckily, I have a group of 4th graders that came to for writing (well, had...people weren't thrilled they were getting pulled).  So, for our LAST writing group, I decided to do a Thanksgiving craft.  I know I probably saw this somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember where.  And I also forgot to take "after" pictures.  You know, the ones of completed projects.

*sigh*

Anyway, directions:

1. We created giant turkey cut-outs.
   
2. Each student then cut out feathers out of certain colors (the colors happened to be what I had scraps of).
   
3. The feathers were then glued onto the turkey.
   
4. A turkey related word was written on each feather.
   
5. (due to time) each child was put in charge of one feather.  We talked about thesauri (the plural for thesaurus, in case you were wondering.  :-P ), and how to use the guide words.
   
6. Each student looked up their words and then wrote the synonyms on that feather.
   
7. Students then shared their synonyms so we could write down all of the synonyms.

Here are some pictures of my kiddos working on them:

I'm going to try really hard to get into the groove of writing...and I have planned out my next few posts.  I'm just not sure what to write about after that.  It's hard to find things to share when you feel like you're not doing anything exciting.

Until next time!