Kindergarten Corps: Thanksgiving Day Crafts in Kindergarten

Thanksgiving day week has come and gone. We celebrated all week long by reading non fiction books on Indians, Pilgrims and even turkeys. Now comes our culminating activities... pilgrim hats and indian crowns to wear home at dismissal.

Here is the pattern I used for pilgrim hats for boys. I used a standard manila folder as the material so that the template is thick enough to last for years. I got the pattern from a past teaching partner and have used it ever since. It is too large to trace and scan on a 8.5 by 11 paper so I don't have a link for it. However, through the pictures you can see it takes up the entire size of the manila folder and traces nicely onto a large 18 X 13 construction paper without having too much excess to trim off.

Pilgrim Hat Template to trace on black construction paper

Pilgrim hat trim and gold buckle

Pile of Pilgrim hats and all the fixin's! Ready for kids to glue.

In order to adjust each hat to each student's head size. I place the hat on their head and then pinch and overlap the excess in between my fingers. I staple that together and it fits like a glove!

Pilgrim Hats get fitted to each head.

Pilgrim hats get the excess overlapped and stapled to fit perfectly.

Here are a few cutie pies wearing the finished product while enjoying some juice.

Pilgrim Hats for boys!

Now for the ladies. They got to wear bonnets made out of white construction paper and black yarn. It took a lot of folding, one staple, two 12' pieces of yarn, and a hole punch.

Here are two pilgrims side by side. The little girl looks adorable in her bonnet.

Pilgrims in a bonnet and hat enjoying a snack

Here are the step by step folding instructions for creating that bonnet shown above.

Step One to making a pilgrim bonnet

Step One: Take a standard 18 by 13 paper and fold up an inch from the bottom. This will serve as the cuff of the bonnet.

Step Two to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Two: Flip the paper over.

Step Three to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Three: Take the left and right top corners and fold inward equally in the same way you would fold a paper plane.

Step Four to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Five to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Four and Five: Fold the left and right sides inward evenly over each other then fold the top peak down as well.

Step Six to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Step Six and Seven: Open the flaps and pick up the top peak and the inside squared flaps and hold them in the same hand together as shown above. This is where you will place the staple making sure the top peak and the two squared flaps are in the same staple. See below.

Step Seven to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Now pop that sucker open by square it out. Place a hole punch on each side of the cuff and tie a yarn string into each hole.

Step Eight to making a pilgrim bonnet.

Pilgrim girl bonnet out of construction paper

One of my coworkers bought doilies from the dollar store and cut them in half. Then she glued one half to the top of each bonnet. I choose not to embellish my bonnets this way because I think pilgrims would have had simple bonnets in "real life."

I was able to prep the boys' hats in one sitting after school and the girls' bonnets on a separate day. While I fit the kids with their bonnets one at a time, I have them color a pilgrim coloring sheet. Click here for the free download.

Free Pilgrim Coloring Sheet

We also made Indian crowns the day before. We had each color symbolize a part of the Indian life style we read about earlier in the week. The kids related it to camping as we were discussing the colors. Red was fire for keeping warm and cooking meat. Yellow was the sun for growing plants. Blue was for water. Brown was for soil.

Indian Crowns for Thanksgiving

Indian Crowns for Thanksgiving - Symbolic Colors

As the kids were finishing their Indian crowns I had the early finishers color a cute sheet from Artifex Clip Artist found on TeachersPayTeachers. It is shown below. Click here for a free pdf file.