Goin on a turkey hunt

We have been reading a variety of books about Thanksgiving and in many of our books, the authors show the historical story of how the Pilgrims sailed across the ocean and came to a new land only to find that they didn’t know how to survive in this new land.  What the children have found most interesting in these books are the Indians who made their own bows and arrows and taught the Pilgrims how to hunt for food.  Building on the children’s interest we made our own bows and arrows and then went on a turkey hunt…

We had to brainstorm what we would need to make our bows and arrows and the children easily decided that we could make them from sticks – so off they went to gather sticks.  The children had to find sticks that were long and perhaps had a bit of a curve or arch for their bows and then shorter sticks for their arrows.  This meant we had to do lots of searching, comparing, and collecting of sticks for our hunt…

We also needed turkeys to hunt.  Each child threw together a paper bag turkey but we noticed that we had flat turkeys and no hunter wants to eat a flat turkey…

The children took their paper bag turkeys outside to fill them up with leaves. While we were stuffing our turkeys with leaves, one of my students asked me, “Mrs. Stewart, Do turkeys eat leaves?”  What a great question!…

Once our turkeys were stuffed and the ends were tied off, the children went back outside and hid their turkeys…

And finally we went back to making our bows and arrows…

The children wrapped their bows with a special kind of tape (which I will share more about soon) while Mrs. Courtney and I tied a large rubber band on the ends of each bow to make the string of the bow…

Here is a look at a few of our completed bows…

Now that we had our bows ready to go, the children went outside to gather more sticks for their arrows and hunt for their turkeys….

I was a little worried that we might have kids accidentally shooting each other with their arrows but I didn’t have to worry because we spent most of our time just trying to figure out how to hold the bow and the arrow in the right position in order to get the bow to spring up into the air.  This was quite challenging and most of the children did not have the coordination to get an arrow to shoot anywhere at all.  The entire turkey hunt preparation and adventure was lots of fun for the children and the children loved the adventure of it all and so did I!

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Check out all the other Thanksgiving Books for Children by Clicking here!

Deborah J Stewart

Deborah J Stewart

Every time I think I know everything I need to know about teaching young children, God says, "Hold on a minute!" and gives me a new challenge.

Let me tell ya...

With each new challenge that you overcome, you will find yourself better equipped and more passionate about teaching young children.

God didn't call wimps to lead, teach, or care for His children. Nope, he has high expectations, so get ready. You will have to give your very best but after teaching for over 30 years, I can tell you that it is a wonderful and rewarding journey.

Whenever your calling feels hard, just remember, 'He who began a good work in you (and in the children you serve) will be faithful to complete it.'

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