Songs for Teaching Blog

Fun Thanksgiving Activities from Months of Music
by Karen Rupprecht & Pam Minor

The Thanksgiving Shopping Game

•    Supply pictures of food, paper plates and grocery bags.
•    Spread the pictures on a table and have the children "go shopping" by selecting 3-5 items they would enjoy eating, then placing them in their bags.
•    Each child names and counts the food he or she chose and puts those foods on a plate.
•    Everyone joins hands and gives thanks!

A Fun Fingerplay: A Turkey is a Funny Bird

A turkey is a funny bird
(Hold up one hand.)

Watch him wobble wobble
(Sway your hand)

All he knows is just one word:
Gobble, gobble, gobble!

Make Your Butter for Thanksgiving Bread!

•    Fill a small jar halfway up with cold whipping cream.
•    Each child shakes his or her jar for five minutes, until the cream makes butter.
     Shake to some lively music!
•    Pour off liquid. Refrigerate butter.
•    Serve with your Thanksgiving bread.
  Hint: Add a little salt to the cream for taste.

Listen to a short sample of Every Day is Thanksgiving from
Months of Music in the audio player, below.

Thanksgiving will be here soon, but there is still time to introduce new, related songs and activities in the classroom.  As the holiday season approaches and students begin to get restless, I am open to anything that will catch and keep their attention!

One of those sure-fire songs is "The Ten Days of Thanksgiving".  It is based on the familiar tune, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", so when I begin singing it, everyone instantly recognizes the melody and becomes attentive.  Here are a few other reasons why I love incorporating this song into my lessons:

•     Remembering what is associated with all 10 days is a fun challenge, and what student doesn’t respond well to one of those?  By the tenth day, my class can usually sing through all the verses accurately, and I love to see the look of triumph on their faces.
•     For younger students, this song targets counting skills, not only forward, but backward as well.
•     It’s about food.  Let’s face it: kids love food, whether they are singing about it or eating it.
•     This song simply cries out for corresponding visual aides.  I actually created a flip book, each page of which features one day of Thanksgiving.  It has the number written in big, bold print, as well as an actual photograph of the food associated with that day.
•     Student participation is encouraged.  Many times, I’ll take the book apart (It is held together with a binder ring, so this is very easily done.) and give every student a page.  When their number is sung, they join the line and hold up their page so that by the end of the song, all ten students are standing in a row.  If you have more than ten students in your room, take turns by repeating the song.

I must say, this song is a challenge for the teacher, too!  When I first started using it in the classroom, I had a little cheat sheet taped to my guitar so that I could remember the order of verses.  But now, after singing it so often (mostly at the request of the students!) it is deeply ingrained in my memory.  The day has just begun, but I have no doubt that I will sing this tune no less than six times before school is over!
This article was written by Rachel Rambach

Listen to this song from Listen & Learn: Thanksgiving in the audio player, below.

Along with topics such as gratitude, food and family, Thanksgiving is a good time for learning and teaching about Native American cultures, including their rich and diverse musical traditions.  As a nation, we have thankfully come a long way from the simplistic and offensive ways in which Native American music was sometimes represented in times past.  It can sometimes be daunting to find materials that are respectful of the complexities of the various Native American nations (or tribes), which are also accessible to young children.

Ya Ha Haway is an inter-tribal greeting song.  It is not associated with one particular Native American nation, but has been used as a cross-cultural welcoming song. This song also features a drum part that is fun to play on either drums or body percussion (clapping, stomping, patting, etc.)

There are many wonderful Native American game-songs.  Wee Hee Nah is a “duck-catching” game played in a similar fashion to “London Bridge.”  Two children (the duck-catchers) make a bridge with their hands outstretched high towards each other.  The other children are the ducks, and they walk in a circle going clockwise, passing under the bridge.  At the end of the song, the two duck-catcher children bring their hands down to catch whichever “duck” happens to be under the bridge at that point in the song.  Some versions have the caught child excluded from the game or sent to sit in the middle of the circle, but I prefer to have the “duck” take the place of one of the duck-catchers.

Children often ask “what do the words mean?” and this can be confusing with many Native American songs.  The lyrics of both Ya Ha Haway and Wee Hee Nah are “vocables” – sounds that cannot be translated into specific meanings in another language.

In addition to music, there is a rich tradition of Native American stories, and often stories and songs are combined in mutually enriching ways.  There are a number of wonderful story-song combinations in the book The Singing Sack, including “Gluskabi and the Wind Eagle” (Abenaki) and our favorite, “The Boy Who Lived With Bears” (Iroquois).

Hey, Hey Watenay is a beautiful Ojibwa lullaby, which has made its way into the repertoire of folksingers such as Sally Rogers and Claudia Schmidt.  The minor pentatonic melody is both haunting and comforting, and this song is accessible in both its original form and in English (“sleep, sleep little one…”).

There are also many songs about Native Americans and related subjects.  Older students will learn a lot from Fred Small’s song “The Heart of the Appaloosa”.  Nancy Schimmel’s 1492 and Two of a Kind’s Columbus Revisited both deal with the irony of “being discovered”.

I have heard a number of Native American speakers make a plea to educators that we teach children that Native Americans are alive and present in today’s world – not merely a part of past history.  The vibrant traditions of Native American songs and stories can help to bring this point home.
This article was written by Two of a Kind.

Thanksgiving is approaching quickly and it’s a great time to look at the meaning of the holiday, going beyond the turkey and mashed potatoes. When we think about giving thanks, we think about what we value in life.

A number of years ago, David worked with a class of first-grade students and had them brainstorm ideas for a Thanksgiving song. They came up with the song Thank You for Thanksgiving. The first verse goes like this:

Thank you for Thanksgiving
Thank you for everything
Thank you for the Indians
Thank you for the Pilgrims
Thank you for the space and the stars
Thank you for Jupiter and Mars

It’s a very simple song, and has some of the wonderful kid-like lyrics that you might expect from a group of 6 and 7-year-olds. Using that song as a framework, you can have your students brainstorm their own ideas. The rhyme scheme is “abcbdd.”

Thank you for ________ (a)
Thank you for ________ (b)
Thank you for ________ (c)
Thank you for ________ (b)
Thank you for ________ (d)
Thank you for ________ (d)

Some other great songs on this theme include Raffi’s “Thanks A Lot” and “All I Really Need” on the Baby Beluga album. Also, Betsy Rose has a wonderful song called “I Can’t Imagine.” The first verse begins, “I can’t imagine life without popcorn.” You can substitute different words for popcorn such as family, water, chocolate, etc. Once again, this allows the children to voice their opinions about the things that matter to them.

Combining these songs and songwriting activities with original art is another way students can express themselves. Once they’ve written their own lyrics to the Thanksgiving song they can illustrate their song. The song with illustrations would be a wonderful gift to parents. Happy Thanksgiving!

Listen to a short sample of "Thank You for Thanksgiving" in the audio player, below.
Purchase the song with printable lyrics.