Awww, Thanksgiving! Such a happy holiday snuggled in between Halloween and Christmas. I completely LOVE Thanksgiving, not only for all the super tasty food, but for all the happy family time and reminders to stop all the hurry and go go go to be grateful for all the blessings in our lives.

So, to help you create a little bit of that cozy-thankful feeling in your classroom, here are my current favorite Thanksgiving picture books with a few ideas for how to use each one to teach your elementary students some reading, writing, and/or phonics skills.

SPOILER ALERT: I’ll give a quick synopsis of what each book is about and the literacy skills I think you could easily teach and practice using each book. So, just so I don’t spoil the ending of the stories for you if you wanted to be surprised, you’ve been warned. Haha! :)

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1. Thanksgiving in the Woods by Phyllis Alsdurf

This book tells the story of a family who gets together with all their family members and friends to have “Thanksgiving in the woods”. The author describes everything the family does to get ready, like making foods, driving out to the woods, and talks about the sights and smells of the big event. After celebrating together, everyone walks home happily with thankful hearts and full tummies.

This book offers a bunch of opportunities for students to practice inferring and making connections to their own lives. There are quite a few unique vocabulary words to learn, like “kindling” and “hemlocks”, and the repetition of the words “Thanksgiving in the woods” on most pages is super helpful for encouraging student interaction while reading. This sweet book would also make a great springboard for inspiring student writing, like making connections between the story and their own lives, writing a fiction story based on the book, or changing parts of the story to create a new story!

2. Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes

This book is very simple, naming many happy things in life that we could be thankful for, like leaves, pie, school, animals, moms and dads, and all the fun activities that fall brings. The pictures are bright, busy, and detailed, and make a great inspiration for writing assignments. It’s written with a great rhythm, with a poem-like feel to it.

This little book would be great for practicing identifying rhyming and ending sounds, as well as making connections. It would also make a great inspiration for students to write their own poems, lists of things they’re thankful for, or even for their own stories of things the do during the fall and Thanksgiving time.

3. Porcupine’s Pie by Laura Renauld

Porcupine’s Pie is the story of Porcupine who is getting ready for a fall feast! She starts to make cranberry pie, but realizes she needs some ingredients to continue. So, she sets out to gather what she needs and bumps into a few forest friends, like Squirrel and Bear. She talks with them about what they’re making for the fall feast and they explain that they’re missing ingredients they need. So, Porcupine offers to let them use the ingredients at her house to make their treats! She soon finds that she’s lost all her cranberries, but her friends come to the rescue and they all celebrate the Fall Feast Day together with Friendship Pie. There is even a recipe for Friendship Pie included!

This book is fantastic for teaching about character traits like kindness and helpfulness. It’s also PERFECT for practicing sequencing, retelling, cause and effect, and identifying story elements and main idea and details. And, if you’re feeling super extra, you could make Friendship Pie for your students and have them make their own Friendship Pie craft by including some things that good friends are!

4. Thanksgiving at the Tappletons’ by Eileen Spinelli

The story of Thanksgiving at the Tappleton’s is all about a big family and how they get ready for Thanksgiving Day. The day starts out with the turkey slipping from Mrs. Tappleton’s hands and down the icy driveway into a pond and just gets trickier from there. Mr. Tappleton is sick, the bakery has no more pies, the vegetables are missing, and the kitchen is a MESS. But, all the unexpected events are no match for the spirit of thankfulness the family has for each other and the wonderful day of togetherness!

This book is a great one to read to help your students practice sequencing, changing the beginning or ending of the story, and writing descriptive stories. It would also be a great one to practice comparing and contrasting to students’ own experiences with family and holiday mishaps!

5. This is the Turkey by Abby Levine

This is the Turkey explores all the things needed to make a tasty Thanksgiving meal! The turkey, the pan, the side dishes, and, of course, all the family and friends to help. And there just might be a tiny plot twist at the end that includes a turkey mishap!

This simple book rhymes throughout, making it the perfect fall book for practicing hearing, creating, and writing about rhymes. It’s also great for making connections, retelling the details to practice comprehension, and using as inspiration for writing.

6. Thanksgiving Day by Anne Rockwell

This story is told by a little boy who is telling his dad all about the things he learned in school about Thanksgiving! His teacher taught him all about the first Thanksgiving, the Wampanoag people, and the Pilgrims from England. Then, the boy and his classmates put on a play to show the journey to the new land on the Mayflower. Each classmates tells a different small part of the the whole story, acting out and dressing for each new scene. The little boy connects parts of the first Thanksgiving to things he does with his family and friends on Thanksgiving Day!

A super fun way to use this book in a unique way is to let your students choose parts and act out the first Thanksgiving the way the students in the book did! It also could be used to practice retelling, main idea and details, and comprehension. Students could also use this book as inspiration to write and put on their own Thanksgiving plays!

7. A Turkey For Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting

A Turkey for Thanksgiving is one of my all-time FAVORITE Thanksgiving books because of the fun twist at the end! This cute story is about Mr. and Mrs. Moose who are having a Thanksgiving feast. But, they have no turkey and Mrs. Moose really wants a turkey for Thanksgiving. So, Mr. Moose goes out to find one and bumps into a bunch of friends along the way who try to help him find a turkey. They finally find a turkey, but this turkey most certainly does NOT wants to go home with them. He’s super scared and very reluctant to go with Mr. Moose, but Mr. Moose INSISTS. The fun twist comes in when turkey finds himself AT the kitchen table instead of ON it.

This book is great for making predictions and justifying thinking. It’s also the perfect book to practice inferring about feelings and intentions, as well as sequencing events in the correct order. It’s definitely one of my favorites for kinder and first grade!

8. Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet

This non-fiction book is definitely geared toward 2nd, 3rd, or 4th graders, but it’s such a good story that I had to include it here! It’s all about a boy named Tony who loves to learn how things move and ends up creating marionettes for children when he grows up. He takes his marionettes to New York and Macy’s asks him to create a puppet show with them. This job eventually grows into Tony creating giant “balloon-puppets” to float down the city streets in a parade!

Besides the super unique and fun pictures, this book has a lot of great teaching points! It’s packed with great vocabulary words to explore, has tons of science elements to incorporate, and would make a great springboard for some unique STEM projects like “Create Your Floating Balloon” or “Make A Mini Parade”? There are tons of possibilities. The book even contains a website where the author teaches you how to make your own moving puppets, which would make a great STEM or home connection!

9. The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving by Ann McGovern

This book tells the non-fiction story of the voyage on the Mayflower and the first Thanksgiving, but adds some fun fiction details to the story too. It includes lots of details about traveling conditions, what the Pilgrims saw when they finally reached land, and explains the things that happened in each season of the first year that the Pilgrims were at Plymouth.

This is a perfect book for 2nd and 3rd graders who are learning about this part of history. It would make a great book to write a report about and could also be used for finding facts and research. I've also used it to practice retelling, identifying main ideas, details, and causes and effects.

Hope you could find a book or two that you can use for the next few weeks with your little learners to cultivate and encourage ALL the thankfulness in your classroom! :) I’m truly thankful for you, friend, and I love having you on this journey with me. Happy Thanksgiving!

Cheering you on!