The Story of Thanksgiving Bracelet

As we get closer to turkey time, we’ve been busy reading books about the first Thanksgiving, reading and writing about what we are thankful for, and discussing our plans for stuffing ourselves silly spending time with family.

We also discovered this sweet little story bracelet reading comprehension activity from Dr. Jean.

We have an abundance of pony beads that we let the kids pick through for this activity. All they need is a pipe cleaner and the called for colored beads to build their own Thanksgiving story bracelet.

We passed out pipe cleaners and a little tub with beads for them to pick through at each table. You may think us having them pick through a giant tub of disorganized beads is teacher lazy…We call it embedded fine motor practice.

Have your students follow along as you read the poem, adding beads as the story unfolds.

We also created a little fill in worksheet to do as a follow up with our class to go along with the poem. We did not write this, but created a Read Aloud Poster for our class. To practice our first grade reading comprehension skills, we retold the story again and had our friends touch each bead as we colored in our squares on the activity sheet.

When it was complete, we had them mad dash around the room to find the perfect partner share the story with a friend and retell the events, using the bracelet for help. We allowed them to work with their November Fluency Building Bookmarks to keep their buddy reading on track and help them practice their stamina while reading around the room.