Writing – The Teaching Texan

Stress-Free Thanksgiving Activities for Kindergarten Teachers (No Prep Needed!)

theteachingtexan — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 11:52:31 +0000

November in the classroom has a very specific kind of energy, doesn’t it? You’ve made it through the start of the year, your routines are rolling, but your energy tank? It’s starting to flicker. That’s exactly why I rely on no-prep Thanksgiving activities for Kindergarten during this time — between conferences, report cards, and the sugar-fueled excitement for Thanksgiving break, it can start to feel like pure survival mode.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone — and that’s exactly why I created my Thanksgiving Activities Pack for Kindergarten. It’s a no-prep, print-and-go resource packed with math, literacy, writing, and craft activities that will keep your students learning, engaged, and smiling… while you get to take a deep breath and maybe even finish that cup of coffee while it’s still warm.

Why Teachers Love No-Prep Thanksgiving Activities for kindergarten

Let’s be real: November isn’t the time for laminating marathons or cutting out 50 game pieces.
Teachers need something simple, meaningful, and ready right now.

That’s what these Thanksgiving activities for kindergarten delivers.
Every page is ready to print and use — no color ink required unless you want it, no hours of prep time, and no confusing directions for students. Just easy-to-implement activities that reinforce key Kindergarten skills in fun, seasonal ways.

It’s also flexible enough for early finishers, centers, morning tubs, or sub plans — basically, any of those “we have 12 minutes before lunch” moments that can make or break your day. These activities fill those little time gaps while keeping learning purposeful (and behavior in check).

Literacy Activities That Are Actually Engaging

When I think about November literacy time, I want my students reading, writing, and thinking — but I also want independence.

The literacy activities in this pack do just that. You’ll find:

Letter hunts that build letter recognition and focus
Beginning sound pages for phonemic awareness
Alphabet sequencing practice with “What’s Missing?” pages
Color-by-sight-word printables for building fluency and fine motor skills

These activities are perfect for kindergarten students in small groups or independent centers because they don’t require much (if any) teacher direction. You can use them to review letters and sounds or to give students meaningful work when they finish other tasks early.

And let’s be honest — who doesn’t love a good color-by-sight-word page? My students think it’s “just coloring,” but I know they’re building automaticity with high-frequency words at the same time. Win-win.

Writing About What Matters Most: Family, Gratitude, and Fun

The writing component of this Thanksgiving packet is one of my favorite parts.
Each prompt invites students to write about something personal and meaningful — like:

What they’re thankful for
Their favorite Thanksgiving food
A fun fall activity
Something they love doing with their family

This type of writing connects so beautifully to early childhood development. Young learners are naturally egocentric — they love writing about themselves! These prompts tap into that developmental stage while building writing stamina, vocabulary, and phonics awareness.

To make it even easier to differentiate, each writing page comes with or without sentence starters. I typically give my developing writers the sentence starter version, while more advanced writers get the blank lines to create their own sentences.

Pair these with the Thanksgiving word wall posters included in the pack, and you’ve got an instant mini-writing center ready to go. I like to print one set to hang on our writing wall and another set to keep at each table for quick reference.

Math Activities That Make Sense (and Require No Prep)

Math is another area where this Thanksgiving activity pack shines.
You’ll find everything from counting and number order to patterning and ten frames — all designed to reinforce foundational number sense skills in a fun, seasonal way.

Here’s a peek at what’s included:

“Fall in Line”: fill in the missing numbers for sequencing practice
“Thankful Patterns”: extend shape and picture patterns
Counting to 20: build one-to-one correspondence with engaging visuals
10-Frame Puzzles: a hands-on favorite that practices subitizing, number recognition, and counting

I use the 10-frame puzzles as a grab-and-go early finisher activity. Students can grab a bag, work independently or with a partner, and then record their answers on the included sheet. It’s quick, quiet, and keeps those early finishers focused while others finish up their work.

There’s also an adorable turkey counting craft that sneaks in fine motor practice and number matching. My kids love seeing their turkeys “come to life” as they glue on the feathers that match each number.

The Perfect Finishing Touch: Flint Corn Craftivity

Every classroom needs a little display-worthy moment in November, right?
The Flint Corn craftivity is the perfect way to tie everything together — literacy, fine motor, and social-emotional learning.

Students write what they’re thankful for on each corn cob, decorate the kernels with tissue paper, and assemble a beautiful piece that can be turned into a class bulletin board titled “We’re Thankful For…”

It’s meaningful, adorable, and doesn’t require you to spend your weekend cutting out 25 turkey bodies. (You’re welcome.)

Make This November a Little Easier

If you’re looking for Thanksgiving activities for Kindergarten that:

Require zero prep time
Keep students engaged and learning
Reinforce essential math, literacy, and writing skills
Help maintain classroom calm in the chaos of November

…then this Thanksgiving Activities Pack is exactly what you need.

It’s saved me year after year, and I know it’ll do the same for you.

Grab the Thanksgiving Activities Pack here and make this November your easiest (and happiest) one yet.

How to Create a More Motivating Writers Workshop Experience

theteachingtexan — Mon, 01 May 2017 22:53:08 +0000

Are your students motivated during Writers Workshop, or do they lack the drive to get started with writing? I know that when I started teaching Writers Workshop earlier this year (following Lucy Caulkins), I very quickly learned that my children this year just were not motivated to write. When I was thinking about ways to get them motivated, so many thoughts went through my mind – but one thing jumped out at me. I thought that if I created a more exciting publishing party, then the kids would have something to look forward to that would celebrate their effort and accomplishments with writing. I tried it out and shared about my first experience with a publishing party [here], and today I’d love to share about our most recent publishing party!

This go around I decided to have the students create their own personal cupcake based on a writing checklist modeled after the Lucy Caulkins narrative writing checklist. Here’s a peek at what our checklist looked like for this publishing party.

The kiddos helped me mix all of the ingredients – they LOVE when we do a cooking activity together. To make sure we had enough batter for all of the kids to make their cupcakes I used two boxes of cake mix.

While the kids were at recess I separated the batter out into cups and added coloring.

Since I was the only adult in the room during this activity, I had the kids share their writing with each other while I called a few kids at a time to build their cupcake.

I placed all of their writing out on the tables and had my kids go around at random and sit down and read the writing their peers wrote. I also put out small construction paper notecards so that the kids could write a positive note for each story they read. Let me tell you, the kids were excited about the cupcakes, but I think they were even more excited to read the positive feedback from their classmates!

I must say that this batter was GORGEOUS! The kids were so excited to add the colors of batter for each item on the checklist that they felt they had completed. (Tip: To manage how much of each color batter the kids were adding we used a teaspoon and the kids were instructed to add only one scoop of each color batter).

While the cupcakes baked we continued sharing our writing with each other.

Just for you, I’ve uploaded a free version of my Publishing Pastries color code guide! And guess what? It’s editable! Just click [here] or on the picture below to download your copy!

Overall it does take a fair amount of planning beforehand to pull off these publishing parties, but if your students are struggling with motivation during Writers Workshop I HIGHLY recommend figuring out what a publishing party might look like in your class and giving it a try! If you do try it out, I would love to hear how it went!

How to Plan a Publishing Party That Will Actually Wow Students

theteachingtexan — Sun, 15 Jan 2017 15:00:47 +0000

Lucy and I have a love-hate relationship. Lucy Caulkins that is. While I adore her theory and many of her ideas for structuring Writers Workshop, I often feel it can become a bit monotonous, especially for Kindergarten students. This feeling often grows during those few lessons leading up to publishing or a publishing party. While my students last year became so excited at the mere mention of Writers Workshop, my group this year hasn’t grown to love our special writing time. And to be honest, I’ve been feeling that we needed to spice things up as well.

Driving home from school one day, which happens to be when almost all of my ideas come to me, I was trying to think of a way to make our next Writers Workshop a hit with the kids. I knew we were scheduled to have our publishing party, but wasn’t sure exactly what it would look like. Lucy offers several suggestions in her books – but they just weren’t meshing with what I felt we needed. Then it hit me!

Spending only $11.00, let me show you how I set the stage to engage and wow’ed my students during our recent publishing party. Did I mention the prep work is minimal?

Before our publishing party I created a simple banner using butcher paper. A tip I learned quite some time ago for creating stellar anchor charts and banners is to place the paper on your SMART Board/MIMIO Board/projector screen/etc and trace the letters or pictures. Works like a charm and I don’t have to start over 5 times because of a mistake!

With the banner template created, I invited the kids to help decorate it throughout the day. I LOVE group art projects and corralling all of the kids together to create one final product. When our banner was finished, I hung it up for display during the party.

Like all good parties we needed some sort of food! My kids had recently been begging to cook something, so I figured a little baking was in order. We were celebrating after all!

We mixed all of the ingredients together, then I separated the mixture into plastic cups for each child.

To add a little writing flair and self-esteem to our baking fun, I had the kids add a drop of food coloring to their batter to show what they were most proud of in their published piece of writing. The possibilities for this are endless, but ours went a little something like this…

Red = spacing
Blue = stretching out words
Green = story makes sense
Yellow = capital letters
Purple = punctuation

Kids are always amazed at how food coloring changes the color of things!

Once everyone had their batter and coloring mixed together, I helped them scoop their mixture into a cake pan using a rubber spatula.

All of the variation in colors make this cake look AMAZING!

And it tastes pretty good, too!

Once we got the cake into the oven to bake we got serious about sharing our published writing! I picked up these cute little glitter hats at Dollar Tree and used them as a visual reminder for who was sharing. Students wearing a hat were the readers and students not wearing a hat were the audience.

We gathered in two circles facing each other and started by reading our writing to that partner. Once the reader was finished reading, the listener gave one comment about what they liked in the story. I then had the outer circle (the readers) rotate clockwise to music. When I stopped the music the outer circle stopped moving and read their story to their new partners. We did this several times and then switched roles.

What exactly did my $11.00 go towards? Cake mix, food coloring, glitter hats, and these colorful table centerpieces.

My goal for this publishing party was to create more excitement about our writers workshop and the writing process, and I think it safe to say “mission accomplished.” I’m excited to work through our next Lucy writing unit and plan the next publishing party!

TPT Seller Challenge Week 3: Create Your Masterpiece!

theteachingtexan — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 19:38:00 +0000

It’s week 3 of the #TPTSellerChallenge! This week is all about creating a masterpiece!

Let me tell you what, I’ve created just that! This labor of love has taken me several months to complete. But guess what?! It is finally FINISHED! It’s also the sibling of my best selling [Math Intervention Binder].

Before I jump into the specifics of my [Reading Intervention Binder], I’d like to share a bit of background on how intervention is done in my classroom.

First, lets start off by taking a look at when intervention happens in
our classroom. Each day (Monday-Thursday) we are fortunate enough to
have an Intervention Team (I-team) visit for a 50 minute block. The
block is divided into two 25-minute portions. During this time, the
Tier 3 kiddos work with an I-team teacher, while Tier 2 kiddos work with
me. I do one rotation of literacy, then one rotation of mathematics.
While all of this is happening, Tier 1 kiddos work on various activities
(AKA centers) such as iPad apps, math/literacy centers, read to self,
etc (similar to Daily 5 without the mini-lessons).

On Fridays we still have I-Time but the I-Team doesn’t visit the
classroom. I use this time to meet with some of my Tier 1 kiddos to
make sure that they are getting the necessary extensions that they need
to keep advancing. This is also the day that my Tier 2 & 3 kiddos
get to independently work during I-time through centers activities practicing the
skills that we have been focused on throughout the week.

All of this is great, but who has the time to make a bazillion-and-one
activities to target all of the MANY, MANY skills that we should be
covering during intervention??? I know that I don’t! Time with kiddos
during intervention is so precious that I need to be prepared, ready to
go, and in a hurry!

Fortunately, this [binder] has almost a bazillion-and-one activities! Let’s take a look.

The binder is conveniently organized into 6 sections: Phonological Awareness, Comprehension, Concepts of Print, Phonics, Vocabulary & Word Structure, and Writing.

These sections are designed to help you target specifically where a student is struggling (and easily)! They are also aligned to the NWEA Map Test. If your school uses MAP testing as a progress monitoring tool, this is perfect for you! It’s also a fantastic school if your school does not use MAP testing! My new school does not participate in MAP testing, but I will still use this resource daily because I have seen how effective it can be!

Here’s a closer look at what skills are covered in each section.

Phonological Awareness

Concepts of Print

Comprehension

Phonics

Vocabulary & Word Structure

Writing

I choose to utilize this resource as a binder with each page inside of a
page protector so that the kiddos can write on them in dry erase
marker, then erase them for next time! Hello time saver! However, you
could make class sets of specific pages to use as an independent
practice, homework, centers activity, etc. It truly is a versatile
resource!

This makes it so easy for me to have 3 different kiddos working on
different pages or skills at the same time because they are all
organized in one place! Let’s face it… just because you have 3 kiddos
in an intervention group DOES NOT mean that they all 3 need to work on the
exact same skills. But, how can you manage having three 5-year olds
work on different skills at the same time?? When it’s as a simple as
pulling out one page that targets each kiddos needs, it starts to become
a lot easier to target those areas of need!

In honor of the #TPTSellerChallenge, my [Reading Intervention Binder], [Math Intervention Binder], and [Reading & Math Intervention Binder BUNDLE] are all on sale until July 2, 2015!

Visit any of the hosts of the challenge to see lots of other fantastic masterpieces!

[Third in Hollywood]

[Sparkling in Second]

[Peppy Zesty Teacherista]

[Teach Create Motivate]

“AR” It’s a Pirate’s Life For Me

theteachingtexan — Fri, 29 May 2015 03:12:00 +0000

Saying last week was one of my favorite weeks in the classroom would be an understatement. I dove deep into a theme, more so than I’ve ever done before, and the result was astounding.

The kiddos learned, laughed, and made memories.

I learned, laughed, and made memories.

Fortunately I documented many things that we did during our “AR” Pirate Week, and I’m sharing them with you today!

The whole inspiration for this week was the “ar” digraph, or r-controlled vowel. I’d seen some other teachers post about pirates when teaching this r-controlled vowel. Well… I ran with it!

We did all things pirate in reading. We used treasure (plastic gold coins) to review addition and subtraction concepts. We learned about the ocean and shells during science. We reviewed maps during social studies (pirate themed, of course)!

Here’s a look at the start of our week. I like to vary the use of my can/have/are charts. Sometimes I use one to get a picture of what students have learned mid-way through the week, or at the end of the week. For our pirate week I decided to use it as an assessment of their background knowledge. As you can see, some of those things are not necessarily true – but it’s what the kiddos thought at the start of our unit.

Throughout the week we read several fiction and non-fiction books about pirates. This helped to clear up a lot of misconceptions. Here’s a list of my top 10 pirate books:

To introduce the ar digraph I can’t think of anything better than a Harry Kindergarten song! This one is AWESOME!

We also created a hands-on ar words anchor chart together after the kiddos had been introduced to the ar digraph.

I
love getting the kiddos involved in creating the anchor chart beyond
them stating their ideas and recording it myself. Plus, they get so tickled
to use sticky notes! Each student wrote at least one ar word on a sticky note to add to our anchor chart.

After some practice with “ar” words, the kiddos went on an “AR” Word
Hunt. I made these cute little signs pretty quickly one afternoon using
the school’s die-cut machine. The kiddos went around and recorded
words that either did or did not have the ar digraph.

We did another “AR” Word Hunt, but this time the words were spread
throughout the Kindergarten hallway. Such a small change in scenery can
be a game changer for engagement! The kiddos loved searching for words
with their pirate hats and eye patches! The hats, recording sheets,
and ar cards came from another teacher’s product [here].

You can grab your own eye patches for super cheap by clicking the following link, Pack Of 24 Felt Eye Patches – Pirate Eyepatches – Party Favors – Costume .

We ventured into using QR codes with the iPads this week during Daily 5. During Listen to Reading the kiddos watched a read aloud of “How I Became a Pirate” by Melinda Long.

I can now say that I love using QR codes in the classroom, and so do the kiddos! You can grab your own copy of the QR code (links to SafeShare) by clicking [here].

During science we focused on oceans (landforms, animals, etc.). We started off with some hands-on exploration of seashells.

Shhhh…. Don’t tell anyone, but I gave my kiddos the full science block of our first day studying oceans to just explore the seashells with a hand lens and their senses. I knew the majority of my kiddos didn’t have any experience with seashells, and I wanted to give them the opportunity to form some background to attach new learning to.

The next few days we spent discussing how seashells are made and sorting them. I let my kiddos decide how they want to sort them (in small groups). As long as the group can explain how they sorted them, I’m a happy camper!

The group on the top chose to sort their shells by size (small, medium, large). The group on the bottom sorted their shells by shape.

This little guy was listening for the ocean. So cute!

To wrap up our fun pirate-themed week, we made a yummy snack! We made blue jell-o together to resemble ocean water. Then, we dropped a Swedish fish candy in.

The kiddos loved getting to help make our snack to end the week. I loved secretly building in review of math skills we learned during the year.

I secretly made these super-cute orange boats to go on top of the jell-o.

I added them to the jell-o cups while the kiddos were at specials. They were beyond excited to see and eat their finished product in the afternoon.

Happy Friday, y’all!

You Oughta Know About… Writing in the Clouds

theteachingtexan — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 13:06:00 +0000

Happy Easter weekend! I know I get so excited about changing seasons, but there’s just something about this time of the year that is magical. We’re in Fredericksburg, TX for the weekend doing some shopping, spending time with family, and visiting some vineyards, but as we drove in yesterday it was just rolling hills of Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. So. Beautiful.

Anyway, I’m not here today to talk about flowers. But I am here to join some of my blogging buddies to share some great lesson ideas, apps, and other classroom must-haves!

This time of year it’s amazing to look back at where kiddos began and where they are now, and I’ve particularly been reflecting on writing lately. I feel like I’ve been pretty darn successful this year on gradually releasing my kinder friends so that they can be awesome little writers – so I wanted to share a lesson idea that fits perfectly with Spring!

A couple of weeks back we did a unit on Weather. When you’re doing a unit on weather, you have to talk about clouds, right?! So I started thinking about how to help my little friends become more descriptive when writing about clouds (let’s be honest there was a lot of “Clouds are white. Clouds are fluffy,” which is great but I wanted to push them a bit further). I was inspired by Mrs. Schmelzer’s [blog post] from a while back.

Then I had a light bulb moment! I remembered 2 awesome books that talk about the shapes that clouds can appear to take. If you’ve never read “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” by Charles Shaw or “Little Cloud” by Eric Carle with your kiddos, please jump on it!

I just think that they’re both such great options for discussing clouds that we read both! After reading these stories we came up with a new list of describing words for clouds (much more expansive now).

Then came the fun part (and my secret way of motivating my little writers, shhhh!). Each kiddo designed their own clouds using cotton balls and glue.

Now that we have some super cute, child-created clouds what do we do? We write!

I just love seeing what little ones come up with, don’t you?

I hope that this lesson idea will be helpful for you, and I hope that you will visit some of my other blogging buddies to see what they are sharing about!

An InLinkz Link-up

Monday Motivation: Loads of Ladybugs!

theteachingtexan — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 23:18:00 +0000

If you’re reading this, I have great news for you.

You survived Monday (and I guess that means I did as well)!

But seriously, today and tomorrow are STAAR (state) testing so we are pretty much confined to the classroom – so not fun on a Monday.

I thought it’d be fun to share a fun lesson idea for a classic read aloud and freebie today for my quick Monday Motivation post. This week we are doing all things ladybugs, so we after discussing what we already knew about ladybugs, we jumped right into the one and only “The Grouchy Ladybug” by Eric Carle.

This book is definitely a favorite for the kiddos (and let’s be honest, myself as well).

After reading the story I had the kiddos tell a partner why they felt the ladybug was grouchy. The kiddos wrote their ideas on a sticky note and added it to the class anchor chart. So easy, quick, and the kiddos love using stickies! I snagged this idea from [Nellie Edge].

During science we tied in our ladybug theme by learning about the parts of a ladybug. I whipped up this [FREEBIE] to record our learning! Make sure you grab your copy!

I’m definitely excited to continue our week with ladybugs. We may be having some special little visitors join our class on Wednesday! If you’re in need of ladybug larvae, caterpillars, etc. I highly recommend Insect Lore Ladybug Land!

You Oughta Know About… DoodleLoops!

theteachingtexan — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 12:55:00 +0000

I am so excited to link up again today with Ms. McClain for her monthly “You Oughta Know” blog hop! The blog hop is all about strategies, organizational tips, products, etc that you oughta know about as a teacher!

Last month I shared about Sparkle (a fun, easy, and FREE spelling game). You can check out how to play Sparkle in your own classroom [here].

This month, I think that you oughta know about a fantastic writing resource called DoodleLoops!

Before, I start… I want to say that I was not asked by the creator of DoodleLoops to write about them, but I feel so strongly about this writing resource that I felt you NEEDED to know about it!

So, what in the heck are DoodleLoops?

I’ll tell ya, but first let me give some background on why I feel they are so fantastic!

At my old school we adopted a curriculum called Writing Alive. Now, I’m not going to share much of my opinion (good or bad) on the program, but I’m starting here so that you can see some examples of writing that we did this year.

Basically, the curriculum starts the year heavy on learning the parts of a sentence. Great! My kiddos became so strong at identifying subjects, verbs, objects, and phrases. I honestly can’t remember learning those specifics in first grade!

Now this is no reflection on the curriculum as a whole, but in my eyes it was very teacher driven. I get the importance of modeling, but I wanted to see what my kiddos could write about without me giving them an example first. I mean, what would my first graders do if I just gave them a prompt or question to write about???

Coincidently I was struggling with finding activities for my kiddos to work on during reading centers (Daily 5), especially for work on writing. I had my curriculum for writing lessons, but no resources for work on writing.

So, I started digging through some of the “inheritance” that the teacher before me had left. That’s when I found a copy of DoodleLoops!

The idea behind DoodleLoops is that there are pictures (many times unfinished) with a simple question that gets kiddos started on writing. Here’s some examples of work with DoodleLoops during Daily 5. (It’s ok to laugh; I find the banana example to be quite humorous!)

To make things easy on myself, I started making packets of these for my students with anywhere from 5-10 in them and extra lined space on the back of each. This way my kiddos got the CHOICE of which they would do each day! I would collect them periodically to take a look at what my little ones were writing about during work on writing.

I love these because the writing prompts are SO simple and easy to read. I also love these because the prompts are so fun for the kids to write about. My kids would literally beg for more copies of DoodleLoops! I really feel like my students started to love writing more when I added these into our work on writing center.

Side note – I can’t stand the question “How much?” or “How long?” I didn’t want to turn my first graders into sentence counters! I would always answer back with “How long do you think it should be?” or “As long as it takes to tell your reader enough to understand…” Something along those lines. I was shocked that my first graders were already asking this question. I’m happy to say that I broke most of them of that habit pretty quickly!

Now, I’m not saying that you need to go buy DoodleLoops, but I highly recommend checking out some of the products. I will absolutely be using these in my classroom again in the coming year. You can download a free sample [here] or visit the DoodleLoops TPT store [here].

Hopefully this will be a resource you may enjoy in your class, or will at least give you some ideas for writing time in your class.

You can hop over to any of the other great blogs below to see some more resources, ideas, and tips that you oughta know about!

An InLinkz Link-up