Handprint Turkeys and Indian Headresses

We got a lot of things accomplished today in my classroom.  Maybe it was because we had several students absent or it could be the fact that it is Friday.  So right before lunch, I decided to have my students work on their Indian headresses that they will wear when we sing Thanksgiving songs at a local nursing home.  I like to use natural materials to make these as I feel Natives Americans would use natural materials to make theirs.  So I had the students use brown beans, black beans, and split peas.  I would have liked to add white beans too, but I didn't have any.

To make the headress, I gave each student a sentence strip.  I explained how one side had three lines to write our name and the other side had one line for our patterns that we were going to make.  I demonstrated how to lay the pattern out and pick up each piece to put a dot of glue under it to hold it on.  I was Amazed at how neatly they did at gluing their pieces down.  Maybe it helped that I made them sing the glue song from Dr. Jean's CD.  Anyway, here is what they look like.

 

Here is a close up.

 

 

Here is a different pattern one of my little made.

 

 

 

So now that we have that done, we can write our "Indian names" on the front and start earning feathers for things that we can do, such as tying our shoe.

 

 

We also made handprint turkeys today.  I had a wonderful volunteer who came in and assisted while the kids did traditional centers.  Yes, I work somewhere that allows us to have housekeeping, blocks, and a sensory table.  We actually got NEW toys too.

 



My volunteer is willing to come help out next Friday too!  Oh, I am not sure where the poem came from with our turkeys.  I have had it for years in my Thanksgiving files (Yes, I said files.  Six hanging file folders stuffed full to be exact.).  My next project.....clean out my files. ;)