Favorite Thanksgiving Books

I have many Thanksgiving books that I read to my children, but I will try to make myself limit this post to a top 10, with a few chapter books for added bonus.

1.  A Turkey for Thanksgiving (Eve Bunting)—This is my number 1 favorite!  It’s so cute, and I love the illustrations!

2.  Thanksgiving Day (Gail Gibbons)—I’m a big fan of Gail Gibbons’ books, and I love how this book so clearly explains Thanksgiving, including its origins and current traditions.

3.  The Night Before Thanksgiving (Natasha Wing)—This is a really cute poem in the tradition of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

4.  Cranberry Thanksgiving (Wende and Harry Devlin)—I love this Thanksgiving story because it has a really nice lesson in it about not judging people by their appearance.

5.  Over the River and Through the Woods (John Steven Gurney, illus.)—I remember this song from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  I’ve always liked it, and this book has really lovely illustrations.

6.  Over the River:  A Turkey’s Tale (Derek Anderson)—This is the same song, only the illustrations render it very different from the book above!  Very cute!

7.  I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (Alison Jackson)—This is a funny Thanksgiving version of the well-known rhyme, with a surprise ending.

8.  One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims (B.G. Hennessy)—This cute poem takes a look at the first Thanksgiving and includes 10 little Wampanoag and 10 big turkeys.

9.  Samuel Eaton’s Day, Sarah Morton’s Day, and On the Mayflower (Kate Waters)—Okay, so this is 3 books…oh well.  These aren’t necessarily Thanksgiving books either, but I read them every Thanksgiving because they’re about the Pilgrims.  I love these because they have real photographs of re-enactors, and everything appears to be very authentic, as if you are really there!

10.  A Plump and Perky Turkey (Teresa Bateman)—This is a humorous tale of a turkey who cleverly escapes being Thanksgiving dinner.

Bonus Books—These are both short chapter books.  They’re longer than your typical picture book, so they’re not books I would read aloud in one setting.

The Thanksgiving Story (Alice Dalgliesh)—This is the story of the first Thanksgiving in the New World, told from the point of view of the Hopkins family.

Molly’s Pilgrim  (Barbara Cohen)—The story of a little girl who is a Russian Jewish immigrant trying to fit into her new school in America.  It’s nice to read about Thanksgiving from a different perspective.

I'm linking this post to "The Children's Bookshelf" at What Do We Do All Day?

Thanksgiving Week Tot School

Thanksgiving week was short, of course, and I really didn't do anything creative this year as far as Thanksgiving goes...sad, I know. For just a few days, however, Gabriela did get in a lot of good tot activities.

1. Pipe cleaners in a Pringles can. I found this idea at Learning with Bella, only I didn't have any hole reinforcers, so I didn't bother with the color matching for now. I'll try that in the future, though. I just hole-punched holes around the lid of the Pringles can, and I showed Gabriela how to push the pipecleaners through. This worked best with fluffier, fatter pipe cleaners! By the way, the lowered ironing board was my husband's idea. I normally get Gabriela to stay focused better if she's strapped in her booster seat, but it's nice to let her roam free for some activities, and the lowered ironing board was at just the right level for her.


2. Elefun Game--While this game probably is a bit too difficult for Gabriela (even my 5-year-old has trouble catching the butterflies), she was mesmerized by the butterflies shooting out of the trunk and floating down. I might give it another go sometime.

3. Magnetic pattern blocks. We found a place to store our easel/magnetic marker board/chalkboard downstairs, so now I can use it again in school. Hurray!!! This was a favorite activity this week and was used more than once.

4. She did a bit of Thanksgiving coloring.

5. Fish tank--Since we're in England away from family, we normally have Thanksgiving meal with a lot of our English friends who LOVE our Thanksgiving! Our friends who hosted it had a small fish aquarium in their kitchen. We let Gabriela stand on a chair to watch the fish.


6. Over Thanksgiving break, Isaac's GeoTrax set came out. All 3 kids had a blast with it.

7. Decorating the Christmas tree! This was Gabriela's first time to actually help (a bit) with the decorating. She at least grasped the concept that the ornaments went on the branches.

Here she is hanging up her special "Baby's 1st Christmas" ball from 2 years ago.


That's it for this week. Check out 1+1+1=1 to see what other tots did this past week!

Thanksgiving Stories

I've not had a lot of time to do any creative Thanksgiving projects this year, but here are some Amazon carousels of our favorite Thanksgiving stories. I think my #1 favorite Thanksgiving book is A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting. The story is very cute, and I love the pictures! One Thanksgiving book we read is Bring in the Pumpkins by Dahlov Ipcar. I couldn't find this book on the Amazon site, so it's not on the carousels. It's just a nice Thanksgiving/harvest rhyme with pleasant pictures, and I quite like it! Collecting children's books is a passion of mine, so I'm always on the look-out for more. You can never have enough books! So, what are your favorite Thanksgiving books??? Do you have favorites not on my list? Please do share!!!