Sandwiched between Halloween and the winter holidays, Thanksgiving sometimes misses its moment to shine in media, marketing, and the classroom. Even if you want to do Thanksgiving-themed activities with your students, finding quality, engaging materials for this holiday can be more difficult than others. 

We’re sharing Thanksgiving activities for students that you can use in ELA, social studies, and science to help you inform, celebrate, and reflect in your classroom in the weeks ahead:

• Discover Thanksgiving literature and poetry in ELA
• Learn more about Thanksgiving traditions in social studies
• Explore the science of food

[Discover Thanksgiving literature and poetry in ELA](id-ela)

Make reading and research timely and relevant by creating Thanksgiving-themed ELA lessons for your students: 

Explore the history and cultural impacts of Thanksgiving

How much do your students really know about the history of Thanksgiving? Do they know how often the holiday appears in literature and poetry? Help them dive into these questions with activities for:

Thanksgiving background knowledge 

Prepare your students to understand the context of Thanksgiving using nonfiction content with resources that build their background knowledge.

• Discover which common Thanksgiving dinner foods originated in North America before the Pilgrims.
• Test students’ knowledge about Thanksgiving myths and facts, such as the date of the first feast and the original destination of The Mayflower.
• Go back in time to see how New Yorkers in the late 1800s celebrated Thanksgiving. Hint: It wasn’t with a parade!

Thanksgiving fiction and poetry

Help students explore the themes of Thanksgiving and the attitude of gratitude with fiction and poetry selections like:

• “The World’s Biggest Thanksgiving Disaster” by Erin Guendelsberger
• “Thanksgiving Day” by Lydia Maria Child
• “A Song of Thanksgiving” by E. Barrie Kavasch
• “Thankfulness” by Dale Cross Purvis
• “America, I Sing Back” by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
• “One day is there of the series” by Emily Dickinson

Make past-to-present connections with Thanksgiving celebrations

Encourage students to explore different perspectives and make past-to-present connections using Thanksgiving resources like:

• An article explaining how few colonists actually participated in the first Thanksgiving.
• An explainer article about the Mayflower voyage and life at the Plymouth colony.
• An image series that shows depictions of Indigenous and Pilgrim relations in colonial times.

Bring food and family into your research projects

Need a November research project? Try one that pairs with what we all have on the brain this time of year: Food, family, and culture! Students can answer questions like “Why is food important to different cultures?” or “What foods are connected to holidays?” by researching articles on topics like:

• How supper clubs help people of different cultures connect through food.
• How soul food and southern food are related.
• What people eat during cultural and religious holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah.

[Learn more about Thanksgiving traditions in social studies](id-ss)

Discover how Thanksgiving evolved into the holiday we celebrate today with engaging, timely social studies lessons:

Break the history of Thanksgiving down into digestible, elementary lessons

Give your youngest students a primer on the history of Thanksgiving using the following lesson:

• Start with a 3-2-1 activity where students record three words, two questions, and one drawing or symbol that reflects what they already know about Thanksgiving.
• Assign an article on the first Thanksgiving, and while students read, ask them to annotate details about why the first Thanksgiving happened.
• Extend the lesson by creating a class recipe book, where students each contribute one recipe they would bring to their “Class-giving” if they could all celebrate the holiday together.

Learn more about Thanksgiving’s origins and past celebrations

For older students, dive into the background of everyone’s favorite food- and gratitude-filled holiday by learning the origins of the first feast and some of our most common traditions.

• Watch a video to learn more about the surprising origins of the most popular Thanksgiving foods.
• Read President Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation that declared Thanksgiving a national holiday.
• Discover where the Wampanoag people—the Indigenous group that helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter—are today and how they feel about Indigenous representation in the historical Thanksgiving story.

[Explore the science of food](id-sci)

The meal is usually the main event on Thanksgiving. Build a science lesson plan that invites students to think about what they eat, where it comes from, and where it goes next.

Discover where a Thanksgiving meal comes from

From turkeys to green beans and potatoes, where does a full Thanksgiving dinner come from? Students can learn more about agriculture and the food supply chain with articles on topics like:

• How farmers use data and algorithms to help them grow crops in extreme weather and changing climates.
• What ultra-processed foods look like and how they add calories and sugars to a person’s diet.
• Why fresh produce in the U.S. is sometimes wasted or thrown away.

Uncover the science behind cooking

Whether a Thanksgiving meal is homemade or eaten at a restaurant, someone’s in the kitchen doing the cooking! Teach students about some of the scientific processes that occur when cooking with this lesson:

• First, have students watch a video of a corn kernel popping in slow motion. Then have them make predictions about how a kernel pops.
• Next, ask students to read an article about the science of cooking, highlighting scientific vocabulary as they read.
• Finally, ask students to create a comic strip that shows the detailed scientific process of a corn kernel popping or an onion making your eyes water. Ask students to include a sketch of each step and a description that uses labels and scientific vocabulary.

Get to know the digestive system

What happens to our Thanksgiving meal after we’re done eating? That’s when the digestive system kicks into gear. Students can learn more about what happens to food as it moves through our bodies and how it helps fuel our daily activities with articles on topics like:

• What the esophagus does and how it moves food from the mouth to the stomach.
• How the digestive system and organs like the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas convert food into energy.
• The different types of salivary enzymes and how they play a role in digestion.

Try food experiments

Take a hands-on approach to Thanksgiving instruction with food-themed projects:

Learn how to make your own Thanksgiving treats

Encourage students to experiment with unconventional ways to make homemade Thanksgiving staples like:

• Butter
• Honey graham crackers
• Microwave cake

Discover how to compost to clean up after the Thanksgiving meal

See how to combat food waste from all your leftovers with a make-your-own compost activity:

• Discover how things in nature decompose, like leaves and food waste.
• Learn what you can do to improve soils to help plants grow better.
• Try a make-your-own compost activity that students can replicate at home after Thanksgiving dinner!

Newsela’s subject products go beyond the big Thanksgiving meal

You can capture this engagement and excitement for learning all year long with Newsela’s suite of subject products. The variety of content and resources—like news articles, primary sources, literature selections, and interactive videos—-helps you teach about any holiday, current event, or historical date throughout the year.

Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for Newsela Lite for free and start your 45-day trial. You’ll get access to our premium content and activities for everything you need to teach about Thanksgiving and beyond.