Thankful Books

A few weeks before Thanksgiving we made these thankful books.  We were all in love with them.  I thought the kids did such a great job with their writing and their adorable hand prints.  

Over the course of about 2 weeks we wrote in our thankful books a page at a time.  During this time in large group and in the art center we were working on adding detail to our drawings, this was supported through our tankful books as we wanted to add as much detail to our drawing of what we are thankful for.  We also read a lot of Thanksgiving books about being thankful to help generate ideas.

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On the first day their pages looked like this, I wrote "I am thankful for___________" and they wrote it.  They would tell me what they wanted to write, we would sound it out together while I wrote it down on a piece of paper, and they would copy it.  You can see her copying it below.  By the end of the thankful book process many kids were sounding out their words and writing them all by themselves.

On the next day I wrote "I am thankful______ __________"  They wrote "for" and their word.  And so on down the line, each day writing more and more of the page, until the last day they wrote the whole phrase themselves!

We sent the books home with 2 pages left blank.  Over the Thanksgiving break they were to fill in the last 2 pages and bring them back for show and tell.  I was so proud of the thoughtfulness and care they they took on these books.  They were so proud of them and it documented so perfectly their lives at this stage, what they are thankful for, how they are writing, and their care in their pictures.  They all turned out unique and beautiful.