Don't Eat Turkey!
Practice opinion writing with your students with this fun Thanksgiving writing. This writing is a great way to practice coming up with reasons to convince others of your opinion. I loved using this writing in the classroom because my son hated all Thanksgiving food and I found many kids did too. They always had great alternatives to eat turkey, think tacos, grilled cheese and pizza. When teaching this lesson it is good to talk about writing descriptive reasons. For example, instead of eat pizza it is good; say pizza is a delicious meal with cheese and veggies in one!
I recommend reading the book "Turk and Runt" by Lisa Wheeler before starting the writing activity. This book is one of my favorite Thanksgiving books and I enjoyed reading it each year. It is the story of a family of turkeys who don't realize that Turk is in high demand for Thanksgiving dinner. Runt tries to convince his family all along working to save his brother. After reading, kids may have a strong opinion about trying to save turkey's and eat other foods for the meal.
After completing the writing, children can then create a turkey craft. This little turkey is holding a sign where kids will write the food they have chose to write about. Save a turkey! Eat more pizza.
- Print out the turkey on brown paper. Print out the turkey feathers on any color paper. You can use a variety of colors and let kids pick or provide them with a few colors.
- Cut out the pieces of the turkey and the feathers.
Provide each child with 6 feathers, you can choose or allow them to choose the colors.
- Glue the feather to the back of the turkey's body. I used six feathers alternating colors.
- Next, add the wing feathers to the front of the turkey's body. Don't glue completely to allow you to attach the sign later.
- Use yellow paper to cut out 2 feet for the turkey.
- Cut out a beak using yellow or orange paper. Then, cut out a wattle using red paper. Glue these on the face and add eyes with a black marker or googly eyes.
Add a beak and wattle to the turkey's face. Use a marker to draw eyes.
- I created a sign using black paper and gluing the save a turkey sign on the paper.
Attach the sign to paper, I chose black to create a sign for the turkey to hold.
- Attach the sign to the turkey. I then glued the writing to a large piece of construction paper with the turkey. These are great for displaying in the hallway or classroom.
This makes a great writing piece to hang in the hallway or in the classroom.
