THANKSGIVING SPIN & SING-A-STORY

As I mentioned in my last post here, here is another option I've used in conjunction with the spinner, but you can use it in other ways.

Spin & Sing-a-Story of Thanksgiving.

The concept of the story part I got from A Children's Songbook Companion book, so it is not my original idea; however, I did rewrite it for my taste and revised how to present it using my spinner and the songs we knew. You can still present the story using the turkey cut out from the previous post here or if you don't want to use a turkey visual to present it, you could use it in a book format as originally mentioned in the companion book. If I had done this in a book format, I would have used a thin binder with page protectors with the storyline pages inserted and the facing page for each left blank to insert the pictures after they had answered and picked the correct picture.  I just noticed a great blog here that posted this same book idea.  It is so wonderful the many great ideas and variations floating around out there.  My file for the First Thanksgiving Story I wrote is attached below.

So here is how I presented it with the spinner. I've also inserted comments for the book version as well.

• Post the pictures on the board or around the room randomly.
• Number the back of the feathers (I used the medium feathers only). Although there are only seven parts to the story, I kept the eighth feather blank on the turkey. If the spin landed on the blank one, they just pulled it out and another child took a turn. This allowed at least an extra spin just for the fun of it. If you want to present the story in order instead of by the random spin, don't number the feathers. As each feather is picked, just go in numerical order. The kids will have fun just spinning/plucking the feathers and won't notice that you are being sneaky and going in the order you want to.
• Have each story statement numbered on a key sheet.
• If using the book format, number the story statement pages and insert those in the page protectors leaving the facing pages blank for the pictures that are posted to be inserted later as you go through the story.  
• Let a child spin the turkey and pluck a feather or pluck a feather from your other turkey visual aid.
• Read the appropriate story statement and let the children give the answer to fill in the blank.  Let them also select the picture that fits the answer. To make it a little more difficult for the SR kids, have the pictures turned over on the board so the kids can't see them, then post the song titles facing front over the back of the correlating pictures. Let the SR kids figure out which song is correct for the answer then remove the song title and turn over the picture.
• If you are doing the book version, you would insert the picture in the appropriate place in your book in the page protector.  You could set the open book upright on the table or on an easel to display the part of the story you are on while you sing.
• Sing the song that correlates with the picture.
• Repeat until done.

There you go. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

First Thanksgiving Story-Nalani