Thanksgiving Activities

Last week, we celebrated the completion of our second benchmark tests (the BIG test) with some fun Thanksgiving activities.

First, we made turkeys.

That craft really worked up our appetites, so we had to have some pumpkin pie!

The recipe for our pumpkin pie is from Illinois Ag in the Classroom and can be found here.



Sarah Hale: The Lady who Saved Thanksgiving

For the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about the history of our country.  We learned about the Native Americans, pilgrims, and a lady named Sarah Hale.  A long time ago, people started neglecting Thanksgiving.  This did not set well with Sarah!  She thought Thanksgiving was a valuable day and wanted to make it a national holiday. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote.  She wrote to 5 presidents, all of them turning her down, until Mr. Lincoln.  He finally granted her wish, and after a 38-year rally, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

After learning all of this (Check out the book we read, called Thank You, Sarah!), the students teamed up to create either a news broadcast about Sarah or conducted a mock interview with her.

Here are the interviews.  One student acted as Sarah, and the other interviewed her.


Here are the news broadcasts:

Red Ribbon Week

Red Ribbon Week is one of the oldest drug prevention campaigns in our country.  The goal of this program is to teach young people the dangers of drug use and to provide them with healthier alternatives.  Last week, October 24-28, New Berlin Elementary celebrated Red Ribbon week by having fun dress-up days, creating posters, and doing writing projects.

If you get the chance to walk through the hallways of NBE soon, you'll see posters all over!  Students in all grade levels made posters to encourage their peers to stay drug-free.

We also made pledges to ourselves.  The Rockstars all came up with a healthier alternative than drugs.  Some ideas were eating fruit, eating vegetables, exercising, staying in school, and eating meat. 

The highlight of the week, definitely, though, were the dress-up days!  On Monday, we wore CrAzY socks because we would never do something as cRaZy as drugs!  On Tuesday, we dressed in sweats because choosing to stay drug free is NO SWEAT!   On Wednesday, we wore red in honor of Red Ribbon, and on Thursday we wore our team spirit gear to TEAM UP against drugs.

The boys on Sweats Day

The girls on Sweats Day

The girls on Red Day

The boys on Red Day

The boys showing their Pretzel pride

The girls showing their blue and orange Pretzel spirit

Our crazy socks