(upbeat music) - Hello, little learners!

Welcome back to our pre-K and TK classroom.

My name is Mrs. Lara, and I'm gonna be your teacher today, hello!

Now, I'd love for you to introduce yourself as always, so when I put my hand to my ear, give me your name nice and loud.

Are you ready?

Oh, I heard you way over here!

Let me see if I caught your special letter.

Now, this is a letter that's kind of tricky.

See if you can recognize it.

First, it has a big curve and then another big curve.

I'm gonna try to put it on.

That's an O, but then we're gonna change it by adding a little line at the bottom.

What letter have I made?

It's a Q!

And our Q is a very special letter.

It has a special sound, goes kwa, kwa.

♪ The Q says kwa, the Q says kwa ♪ ♪ Every letter makes a sound ♪ ♪ The Q says kwa ♪ All right, let's put that away.

Now, today is day five of the five days that we're going to be talking about Thanksgiving!

So let me add another magnet to my board.

I'm gonna do three on the bottom, one on top, and I'm gonna add another one.

So let's see, two on top, three on the bottom, two and three make five.

That means it's our last day, Friday, and we have lots of books and stories left to share.

But first, for the last time, we're gonna do our "Turkey Pokey," which is our song for the week.

And it's a movement song, which means we're gonna stand up in a safe place wherever you are, and do the "Turkey Pokey" together.

So here we go.

We're gonna need our wings, which is this.

We're gonna need our drumsticks, which is the legs, our stuffing, which is our stomach, and our wattle.

Okay, here we go.

♪ Put our right wing in ♪ ♪ Take our right wing out ♪ ♪ Put your right wing in ♪ ♪ And we shake our right wing out ♪ ♪ We do the Turkey Pokey and we turn ourselves around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (claps) ♪ ♪ We put our drumsticks in ♪ ♪ We put our drumsticks out ♪ ♪ We put our drumsticks in ♪ ♪ And we shake our drumsticks out ♪ ♪ We do the Turkey Pokey and we turn ourselves around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (claps) ♪ ♪ We put our stuffing in ♪ ♪ We put our stuffing out ♪ ♪ We put our stuffing in ♪ ♪ And we shake our stuffing out ♪ ♪ We do the Turkey Pokey and we turn ourselves around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (claps) ♪ Last one, our wattle.

♪ Put our wattle in ♪ ♪ Put our wattle out ♪ ♪ We put our wattle in ♪ ♪ And we shake our wattle out ♪ ♪ We do the Turkey Pokey and we turn ourselves around ♪ ♪ That's what it's all about (claps) ♪ All right!

Oh, I saw you dancing!

Such great turkeys.

I think it's time to do Mrs. Maria's letter.

Let's see what she wrote to us today.

Or someone wrote to us, anyway.

Here is our letter.

It says, "Dear Mrs. Laura, I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day!"

Oh, me too.

I'm so thankful for family and friends and good delicious food, and for health.

I wonder what you're thankful for.

Let's read on.

"I am thankful for my family," like me, "my friends, that I am healthy."

So important that you're healthy.

I bet that's because you wash your hands all the time.

"The list goes on and on and on..." It's true, there's so much to be thankful for, and Thanksgiving is a great time to stop and think about all that you have around you that you can say thank you for.

Now, I think that there's a book here about being thankful, and two characters that are thankful for a lot of things that you might be thankful for too.

The book is called "Thanks for Thanksgiving."

It's by Julie Markes, and it's illustrated by Doris Barrette.

Now, the illustrator draws the picture, and the author, Ms. Markes, she wrote the words.

You can grow up to be an author and illustrator too, just like them.

So let's read our story.

"Thanks for Thanksgiving."

This has a dedication page, which is a page that authors write, and illustrators, where they say this book is for someone.

It's to "My amazing mother, Diana, for whom I am very thankful."

Oh, we should all be thankful for our families.

It says, "Thanks for Thanksgiving, for turkey and pie."

Ooh, look at that.

There's even a dog down here trying to get the turkey and the pie, and look, she's hiding, give him some delicious rolls.

That would be me, down at the bottom, trying to get rolls.

"Thank you for fall and gold leaves floating by."

So around this time of year, lots of us love to take walks and look at the leaves changing colors, and it looks like the main characters, the little boy and the little girl, love watching the leaves fall.

Maybe that can be something you try, try to get under a tree and kind of gently shake it to see if it rains leaves.

"Thank you for school.

I love to feel smart!"

That's true, school teaches us lots of things so that we can feel intelligent.

"Thank you for music and dancing and art."

Now, what kind of music is the little boy playing?

He's playing on his violin, and the little girl is dancing in a ballerina outfit.

I love music and art too.

"Thank you for play dates and swings, and for slides."

Look at that.

They're swinging and sliding outside.

Right now's a perfect time to go swing and slide, because it's nice and chilly, you can ride your jacket and you won't get too hot.

"Thank you for hopscotch and piggyback rides."

And they're picking apples too.

"Thanks for sweet puppies and soft, furry cats."

Do you have any pets that you're thankful for?

I have a dog.

Her name is Luna, and she's big and fluffy, and I'm thankful for her.

"Thank you for dress-up, red shoes, and big hats."

Look at them, it looks like they're wearing their parents' clothing.

The little baby's even trying on a necklace.

They look so fancy!

"Thanks for umbrellas, for rain boots, and puddles."

Ooh, that's something to be thankful for.

I love putting on my rain boots and splashing in the puddles, and without umbrellas, we would get all wet.

"Thank you for Mommy and warm, cozy cuddles."

Oh, look, they're even by the fireplace with all of their pets.

"Thank you for Daddy and rides on a sled."

There they are in the snow, being adventurous.

"Thank you for kisses and tucks into bed.

Thanks for the moon and stars up above."

That's something I never say thank you for and should.

"But most of all, thanks for the family I love."

So look at them.

They're on the table.

They're serving Thanksgiving dinner, because that's the tradition in their family.

Some other families don't serve turkey, and they do very different things.

But this is what they do.

Even the dog's included.

"The End," and if you get this book, it has a little place to write your own thankful thoughts year after year, Happy Thanksgiving.

So what do you think?

"Thanks for Thanksgiving."

I liked this book because it was a reminder to think about all the things that we're grateful for and say thank you.

Maybe look around you.

Is there someone that you're grateful for?

Don't forget to say thank you.

All right, we're gonna put this book away, and it's Friday.

That means it's time for our shared writing.

I'm gonna go over to my writing space right now, and if you have a writing journal, get it out with your pencil and you can write along with me.

So let's walk over.

All right, Thanksgiving!

All week, we've been learning about Thanksgiving.

We didn't really talk about where Thanksgiving the holiday comes from, but that might be something to talk about with your family.

So we're gonna write some things that we learned.

Thanksgiving, first of all, is about togetherness.

Now, do you remember the first book we read?

It was about a table, and the table disappeared because everyone was on their devices and forgot about family dinner!

So I'm gonna draw a table here, then I'm gonna write together.

So let's draw a table.

Let's see, a table has legs and a top.

Now, you can draw it however you would like to.

This is just how I drew my table, and I'm gonna write together.

So write with me.

T, to, ge, and there's actually two letters that go together to make the th sound, and that's T-H. And the ending sound is er, er, er.

What letter is that?

R, that's right!

So it's about family being together.

Ooh, family!

That's another word.

Thanksgiving is about family.

So I'm gonna draw a family right here, so I'm gonna draw maybe a mom her daughter.

Let me draw the daughter first.

I give her pigtails.

All right, right here.

Maybe there's a mom.

Now, families all look different, don't they?

Some families have no dad, some have no mother, some have a grandma, some have an uncle.

Every family is different.

I wonder what your family looks like.

I'm gonna draw a dad here and a little girl.

This is what they're gonna look like.

Maybe I'll add a cap.

All right, so I'm gonna write family right down here.

F-A-M-I-L-Y, family and together.

There's one more thing that I always do around Thanksgiving, and that's eat, yum!

So I'm gonna draw some food.

So I'm gonna draw maybe a turkey leg, but remember, not everyone has turkey for Thanksgiving.

It's just what's in some of the books.

Some people have duck for Thanksgiving, and actually there's a very good book called "Duck for Thanksgiving" that I recommend.

So there's turkey, maybe some pie, ooh, or cheesecake.

That's my favorite.

I love cheesecake.

And some bread rolls.

Let's draw that.

So it's about, let's draw that, maybe in a bowl, a plate with some butter.

So fun.

Let's write the word food.

F, oo, ending sound d, d, d, makes the D sound.

Food.

So together, family, food, maybe let's do one more.

What else does Thanksgiving represent for you?

So for me, I thought of one thing, and that's love, because I love to be with my friends and family, and I love to be in my bed without an alarm clock.

That's always fun, 'cause we get vacation around Thanksgiving.

So I'm gonna do a little heart, and then I'm gonna write the word love.

So let's do beginning sound.

L, and then ove.

And this has a silent e. If you know about the sneaky e, there it is.

Oh, I forgot one thing.

Ooh, I have to draw this.

See if you can guess what it is.

I'm not a very good drawer, but I will try my best.

And a lot of people will get mad if I don't include this, because it's a part of a lot of family traditions.

What is this?

A football!

So football is part of tradition for Thanksgiving for a lot of people.

So let's write that one.

Football.

F-O-O-T, b, a, and ending sound, l. There we go, lots of different things that remind us of Thanksgiving.

And you might include some more in your writing journal, but this is what I came up with today.

Thanksgiving is about togetherness, family, love, food, and for some people, football.

So right now, we're gonna end our week with our last turkey in our project place.

So we're gonna walk over there.

I wonder how many steps it's gonna be.

I think seven, let's see.

One, two, three, four, five.

I always guess seven, and it's always five.

I don't learn.

So last turkey.

So you'll remember in our last couple of episodes, we've made a collage turkey using magazine cutouts, we just finished making our texture turkey and our puff paint turkey.

So here's what this is looking like.

And here's what our puff paint turkey looks like.

Ooh, it's kind of neat, huh?

And then in our first episode, we did our leaf turkey.

So now we have one, two, three, four, which means we need one more to sing our song to end the week, and our turkey this time is gonna look like stained glass.

So the materials that you'll need are some cardboard, some tape, and different paints and a paintbrush.

And the first thing you're gonna want to do is take your cardboard right here.

Of course, we're using recycled materials.

I used the back of a board that I had and just kind of have a helper, so you cut it out, and then we're gonna take some tape.

Now, this is called a tape resist turkey.

That means everywhere that you put the tape is gonna leave a cardboard line.

So think about that as you're creating your form.

The first thing we're gonna wanna do is create a face or a head where our turkey's gonna go, and it's gonna be curved.

You'll notice that the tape is straight, so we kind of need to cut it into pieces to make a curve.

Now, you can use any tape, except not Scotch tape.

So masking tape, painter's tape, anything like that, because that will actually keep the paint from going to the cardboard.

So I'm creating a little curve by cutting it out.

And remember, if I go too fast for you, you slow it down.

You can rewatch it again.

Our episodes are available on the Valley PBS website and on YouTube now, which is kind of exciting.

So here's what my head's gonna look like.

Now we need to make some feathers.

So I'm gonna use tape to kind of create what I'm calling a sunshine tape kind of effect.

From my head, I'm gonna go out just like the sun's rays go out from the middle, and go like this.

This is the easy part.

I'm gonna have to show you the harder part.

Now, does your turkey have to look like mine?

No, not at all.

So this is kind of what it's gonna look like for now.

Then you're gonna tape in between each section, and you're gonna end up looking like this.

You can see how I did it.

So this is the turkey head, and here are the turkey feathers.

Now it's time to paint each square or triangle or form.

So for that, I'm gonna take my paint.

So I'm gonna use some red paint, and I thought, hmm, Thanksgiving colors.

I'll do red and white and yellow, and these are gonna be my primary colors that I'm going to mix to create other colors or hues.

So I'm gonna use my blue paintbrush, and I think the first one I'm gonna mix is some yellow, and I want to make it a little lighter.

So I'm gonna grab some white, I'm gonna mix it right on my paint palette here, which is a plate.

There it is.

This activity looks best when you mix different colors together, and you're gonna paint each section or each shape a different color.

Maybe I'll do some red, maybe mixed with a little bit of yellow, so I'm just gonna touch my paint brush up here, grab a little yellow.

Let's see what color it makes.

Ooh, a beautiful kind of pinkish color.

Get a little more yellow in there.

Keep going.

There's orange.

And you're gonna want to do this for every section.

Now, we've made turkeys in different ways here, all using recycled materials.

Let's do another kind of orangey color.

I wonder what other ways you can come up with to make your own version of a turkey, or maybe you don't want to make a turkey at all.

Maybe you have a different tradition.

This is kind of what I'm doing here.

I'll mix some more yellow and red right on my plate, and I can actually mix it right on my board here as well.

Red.

Now, just remember that red is a very dominant color.

So as you're mixing it, just use a little touch of red, and maybe a lot more yellow, and that might get you the result you want.

Ooh, I like this color.

I'll put it down here.

And then the fun part comes.

We're actually gonna take the tape off.

Now, you're gonna want to wait until it dries in order to do that.

But for right now, I just want to show you what it's gonna look like.

Gonna quickly paint all the squares the different colors.

You don't want the paint to be too thick, because you want it to dry kind of quickly.

All right, here is what it's looking like.

Next you're gonna want to take the tape off, and I'll show you.

Of course, you're gonna wait till it dries, but we don't have a lot of time together, so I'm just gonna take it off so you can see what it looks like, or at least get an idea.

Here it goes, the tape is coming off.

All right, this is actually the really fun part.

Just don't wear white when you do it, especially if you're impatient like me and try to peel it off when the paint is wet.

(laughs) But of course we love to get messy here.

No such thing as fancy clothes.

At least when we're here together.

All right, let's see.

I'm gonna keep going here.

A few more pieces of tape, and then I'll add my eyes, and you'll see what our turkey looks like, and we'll end with our turkey song now that we have five turkeys.

Do you remember we did a song about five pumpkins?

Yeah, that's right.

(laughs) It's kind of like that.

Okay, a few more pieces of tape here, and we'll be all done, and you'll see our turkey.

You see how the paint doesn't stay wherever you put the tape?

So whatever design that you create is what's gonna stay and become the background or feathers of your turkey.

Now we need the face, and then I'll show you how to add the googly eyes so we can have our turkey, our recycled tape resist turkey.

Last one!

All right.

Now we just need to add some eyes, because a turkey without eyes doesn't look like a turkey, does it?

Hmm, so I'm gonna add two dots of glue, and here are my eyes.

I'm gonna use some googly eyes because it makes our turkey look silly.

Okay, and then if we had more time together, I would add a beak, and I would add a little wattle to make this more of a turkey shape.

But that's it, our fifth turkey!

We did one, two, three, four, five.

I think we're ready for our song.

Know what?

Maybe I'll draw a little beak here.

(laughs) And a wattle.

There we go.

There's our turkey coming together.

Here we go.

The song goes like this.

Five plump turkeys sitting on a gate.

The first one said- Oh, sitting on the ground!

Not a gate, Mrs. Lara, that's the pumpkins!

Five plump turkeys sitting on the ground.

The first one said, "Oh my, we're getting round!"

The second one said, let me grab my second one.

"Oh, I smell pumpkin pie!"

The third one said, "But we won't cry!"

The fourth one said, "Let's trot and trot and trot."

And the fifth one said, "Quick, don't get caught!"

Because if they get caught, they're going to be eaten.

So in came a farmer and turned on the lights, and the five plump turkeys trotted out of sight.

So what did you think of our song with our five turkeys?

I hope that you either make all of these or pick your favorite and display it on your table for whatever tradition your family does.

Now, before I leave you, I wanted to tell you about two books that we didn't get to read, but that are great reads this time of year.

The first one is "Strega Nona," and it's kind of like "Stone Soup," but it brings in a little bit of the Italian culture.

And I love this book, we just didn't get to read it.

And the next one is "Fry Bread."

Now, Thanksgiving can be very sensitive for certain groups of people, especially our Native American friends, because there's a long history that we didn't get to discuss here together.

So reading books like this that kind of display Native American culture are great conversation starters for your family, and not just this one.

There's tons of others that you can check out at your local library.

All right, boys and girls.

I hope that you had fun here with me for Thanksgiving.

We made five turkeys, read five different books, got five different letters, and practiced some foundational skills, in a lot of fun and a lot of work.

Phew, I'm tired.

I'm ready to go watch some football and eat some pumpkin cheesecake.

What do you think, you want to join me?

Okay.

Well, I won't get to see you next week.

We're gonna have the same episodes run again, but I'll see you the week after, where we're gonna learn about "The Mitten," and different stories involving animals that crawl into the mitten.

So until then, just know that I'm grateful for you, and I'm glad you joined me today.

We'll see you next time, boys and girls, big smooch from me to you.

(smooches) (upbeat music)