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This post has been co-written with Ben Wolfson, a full-time educator and assistant principal in the USA.
This Turkey Alphabet Pie Pick and Color will be one your new favorite letter recognition games for kindergarten! Students can work with either capital or lowercase letters and you can set it up as a pick and color or pick and cover turkey letter identification center. Add this freebie to your kindergarten Thanksgiving activities plan today!
Thanksgiving is a great benchmark holiday in your kindergarten classroom. It marks the one third mark of the school year, and also has a built-in vacation as a reward for the long stretch of learning from August. It also makes for a super easy classroom theme, and there are plenty of November kindergarten activities to keep the motivation going all month long. To top it off, all of these activities are those that revolve around food, and these cute kindergarten Thanksgiving activities are centered around Tommy Turkey’s recipe book for alphabet pie. Combine this turkey letter identification with the classic writing task of asking your students for instructions on how to make a pumpkin pie to see the hilarious results!
Using Letter Recognition Games For Kindergarten
In kindergarten, your primary task is to help students master their foundational skills in reading and math. In literacy terms, this means that they need to be able to recognize all the letters of the alphabet in both uppercase and lowercase formats. As with all key skills, the trick is to give them plenty of opportunities for rehearsal and this simple alphabet pie pick and color is a great resource for independent practice. The activity is self-checking as it will be easy to see if the pumpkin pie piece they chose matches Tommy Turkey’s recipe book, and you can introduce a few letters at a time or use the entire alphabet for an extra challenge.
Preparing Alphabet Pie Pick and Color
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Extension Turkey Letter Recognition Activities
There are a few different options for how to use these kindergarten Thanksgiving activities straight from the printer. You can cut all the alphabet pie pieces out and have students match them to the correct picture of Tommy Turkey, or you can print out the black and white version and have students color in the pieces as they get them correct. To up the challenge for those who are mastering these letter recognition games for kindergarten quickly, try some of these extension activities:
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Alphabetizing – you’ll likely start this alphabet pie letter recognition game by giving students small subsets of the alphabet and asking them to find the correct matches. Once they’ve matched all the pie to all the recipes, have them put the pieces into alphabetical order. You can extend this activity even further by using non-sequential letters so your students have to really demonstrate knowledge of the alphabet to succeed.
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Scavenger hunt – turn this turkey letter identification into a movement break by hiding the alphabet pie pieces around your classroom or outdoor space. Give students a handful of Tommy Turkey recipe pieces and have them race to find their matches. You could also print out multiple copies of each letter and have students race to find as many instances of a specific letter as they can.
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Write it out – your overall goal of letter recognition games for kindergarten is to help students begin to write the letters down. Once your students have found all the matches, have them work with a partner to practice their letter formation. One person picks a recipe card and reads the letter out loud, and their partner has to write down the letter that they heard before comparing answers.
Like this? Then you’ll love my 10 Turkey Themed Literacy and Math Centers. These easy-prep games will get your students working on math, literacy and fine motor skills.
Games included:
1) Turkey Ten Frame Matching – Number 1 to 10 included
2) Turkey Number Writing Mats – These mats come with handwriting lines and prewritten numbers that will teach the child how to do it correctly.
3) Turkey in Disguise Shadow Match – This game will help improve the child’s visual discrimination skills while also develop their fine motor movement when using the clips.
4) Turkey Counting Mats to 10 – Give the turkey the correct number of feathers either by drawing, playdough or using real feathers.
5) Turkey Arrange By Size – 6 different turkey characters included, each in 6 different sizes for the child to arrange.
6) Gobble Gobble Turkey Vowel – 40 different cards that you can laminate and have your students fill in the correct missing vowel.
7) Tommy Turkey’s Alphabet Pie – Pick up a letter card and find it on the provided alphabet mats. There are uppercase and lowercase versions included.
8) Turkey Alphabet Matching – Print out and cut the cards in half. Ask the child to match the upper to the lowercase letters. This is great in sensory tubs, as a hunt around the room or just on its own.
9) Turkey Rhyming Clip Cards – Kids will work on rhyming and fine motor at the same time with these 24 cards provided.
10) Turkey Sounds Game – Song poster and letter cards provided. Kids will choose a letter card and can practice saying the sound or you could ask them to name an object that begins with the letter.
Check it out for more ready-to-go fun!
Funs Books Perfect for Thanksgiving:
Other Printables That Work On Learning Letters:
1) Lowercase Alphabet Tracing Cards – Grab these free lowercase alphabet tracing cards for a quick literacy center that you can use any time of the year! These back to school handwriting practice cards are easy to use; just download and print off copies of the letters you’re studying that week. It’s a great idea to laminate them so you can use them for trace and erase or playdough activities.
2) Flower Alphabet Sound Mats– These cute flower alphabet sound mats will fit beautifully with your outdoor theme and give your students plenty of practice when they’re learning the alphabet. These free alphabet printables show a wide range of common objects and is sure to be your new favorite hands-on preschool letter activity.
3) Space Alphabet Sequence Cards – At a foundational level, you can adapt any of your alphabet order activities to have a space theme, and these cute alphabet sequence clip cards will keep your students engaged with their fun pictures and challenges. They are a great way to have your students work on learning the alphabet independently.
4) Unicorn Alphabet BINGO – This unicorn theme alphabet bingo pack is a fun and engaging way to help preschool students master their letters before starting kindergarten. By having your students play letter recognition games like ABC bingo, you give them opportunities to learn important social interactions like turn taking while also reinforcing the shapes and sounds of each letter.
5) Farm Alphabet Find and Cover – Work on letter recognition with your preschool students using this printable farm literacy center. You can use this fun farm alphabet game any time of the year in small groups or individually.
6) Dinosaur Lunch Alphabet Munch – This dino alphabet match game helps students in identifying lowercase letters and identifying capital letters. In this free alphabet printable for preschool, your student will pick a card and find the matching letter on the recording sheet. So simple! Print your dinosaur worksheet for preschool now!
7) Alphabet Word Search Worksheets – These cute alphabet wordsearch worksheets combine alphabet pictures with hunting for words in a grid and wrap up with traceable letters. The best thing about these alphabet tracing worksheets is that they’re ready to use in a matter of minutes but you’ll have a literacy center you can use all year long for plenty of lowercase alphabet tracing practice!
8) Alphabet Tracing Pages – The traceable letters and pictures in these fun trace and erase kinder alphabet worksheets give multiple opportunities for letter shape practice as well as spelling of some longer words. Download this alphabet tracing worksheets pdf and help your students gain mastery over their lowercase alphabet tracing.
Other Fall Printables You’ll Love:
1) Fall Printable Worksheets Pack – 50-page pack for your little one to practice letter recognition, writing, counting, tracing, coloring and so much more.
2) Fall Leaves Number Sorting – Sort out the leaves and find which numbered tree they came from to practice number recognition, reading number words, and count with ten frames.
3) Fall Leaves Pick and Cover Letters – Pick a letter card then find and cover it on the playing mat.
4) Count and Compare Acorns – Your child will count and compare the groups of acorns to help the squirrel chose the bigger one.
5) Acorn Tracing Lines – Practice fine motor skills with these 4 different acorn-themed worksheets to help the squirrel grab the acorn!
6) Scarecrow Sums to 10 – So quick to set up in just a few minutes, you can sit back and relax while your preschooler or kindergartener has fun learning to solve simple sums to 10.
7) Scarecrow Number Tracing Strips – Combine fine motor practice with early math skills in this scarecrow-themed game to practice writing numbers 1 to 10.
8) Scarecrow Arrange By Size – Develop early math skills with these 3 scarecrow-themed image sets to arrange from smallest to biggest.
