Thanksgiving Tech 2023

It feels like it was just summer and Labor Day, but already Halloween is in our rear-view mirror and Thanksgiving is ahead in a week.

Might be time for a little bit of Thanksgiving Tech. Especially if you are struggling to try to come up with what to do the short week of school, right prior to Thanksgiving. (Those days sometimes are the longest days of the school year.

Here are some great edtech finds:

• Turkey Templates for Thanksgiving Creativity and Writing--From 2017, but this is a perennial favorite that never gets old. Eric Curts of Control Alt Achieve shares some great Thanksgiving Google Slides template activities including these two: Build a Turkey & Disguise a Turkey. Fun creativity for your younger Google-friendly students.

• Build a "What I Am Thankful For" Turkey with Google Slides --Eric Curts was back at it again in 2021 with another Google Slide Template full of fun

• TCEA's 11 Thanksgiving Activities for Joy & Learning--Written by Peggy Reimers here in 2023, this TCEA Tech Notes blog post. It includes Thanksgiving trivia & "Would You Rather" games, along with links to story starter spinners, giving thanks word walls, a Gobble Gobble break out room, Wheel of Thanksgiving, Thankgiving Madness Bracket, and more. It is a somewhat updated version of her 2020 post, with some new ideas and some repeats.

• Best Free Thanksgiving Lessons and Activities--This Tech Learning 2023 article by Diana Restifo has focused lessons on perspective (taking us away from the long ago Pilgrim-centric "first Thanksgiving" stories to look at all of the parties involved--including the indigenous people. Looking at history through the lens of multiple perspectives is vital for building compassion and empathy AND learning the past. Here you will find lessons and links to about 18 different learning websites to enrich student knowledge on the history of Thanksgiving. 

• Elementary Nest's Ideas for Digital Thanksgiving Activities--Lots of links connected to Elementary Nest creator's resources at both Teachers Pay Teachers and her own website. Most items here are her creations and can be purchased.

• This Wixie board of Ideas for Thanksgiving has a multitude of cross curricular ideas for the season. It includes some design thinking activities in addition to digital ways to bring gratitude, creativity, and more together.

• For a compilation of just about anything else you can think of, check out this Thanksgiving Tech Activities Board from All Saints Episcopal School. It's definitely a cornucopia of computer activities for all grades.

From the looks of all of these activities, no one will go bored while they are getting their Thanksgiving tech activities all in order!!

Main photo created in Canva.com. Other Photos screenshot from https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2017/11/turkey-templates.html, https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2021/11/thankful.html, and https://blog.tcea.org/11-thanksgiving-classroom-activities/