Outreach Story Time: Thanksgiving and Food

We’re once again offering sensory story time at Wing Lake Developmental Center monthly! It’s a good Friday when we get to visit, especially when we see our regulars. They asked for November’s theme to be related to Thanksgiving, food, and families.


1. Hello (Talk about the visual schedule.)

2. Talk about theme: Today, we are talking about a holiday coming up this month when we get together with our family and friends: Thanksgiving! What is your favorite thing about Thanksgiving? What food do you look forward to at dinner time?


3. Story: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey by Lucille Colandro

We used props with this book! We have an Old Lady puppet that you can put things in, so we printed out and laminated the objects in the book for the puppet to “eat” while reading the book.


4. Flannel Rhyme: Two Little Turkeys

Two little turkeys sitting on a hill
One named Jack, one named Jill
Fly away Jack, fly away Jill
Come back Jack, come back Jill

Unfortunately, we forgot the flannel board, but we each held a felt turkey and moved them behind our backs and back in front.


5. Story with Sensory Experiences: Rah, Rah, Radishes!: A Vegetable Chant by April Pulley Sayre

This is a great story to use for sensory experiences because all you need are vegetables! There are a lot of different veggies in this book, so we tried to find some that had different textures and smells. We ended up with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, corn on the cob (still in the husk), onion, kale, and asparagus.

 

6. Goodbye Song: If You’re Thankful and You Know It

If you’re thankful and you know it, clap your hands
If you’re thankful and you know it, clap your hands
If you’re thankful and you know it and you really want to show it
If you’re thankful and you know it, clap your hands
Additional verses: stomp your feet, shout “hooray”, do all three

7. Craft Activity: Dot marker turkeys. We provided turkey outlines printed on cardstock and dot markers for students to use after story time. Staff members took extra turkeys to give to students who couldn't attend story time.

A game changer for our outreach sensory story time visits is using a document camera for the books instead of an iPad. We're not limited to what's available as an e-book, and there's less room for error. We just hook up the document camera to the school's projector using an HDMI cable and we're good to go!