Set of 4 Thanksgiving Science Activities

Four very different NO PREP Thanksgiving science activities – just make copies. Use one activity for a time-spacer or use them all together as stations – these resources are flexible! They are specifically designed to be middle school level science – these are not elementary school materials.

All included resources have both print and digital options!

1. Turkey Biology Reading & Comprehension Questions:

• READ about the characteristics, behavior, breeding, and the historical population changes of wild turkeys. Includes an explanation of what Ben Franklin really said about turkeys!
• ANSWER text-dependent reading comprehension questions.

2. “The Science of Gratitude” Reading, Graphic Organizer, & SEL Component:

• READ a “Science of Gratitude” article.
• COMPLETE a graphic organizer to summarize the health information they’ve learned in the text.
• ANSWER Social Emotional Learning (SEL) self-analysis questions related to gratitude.

3. Periodic “Thanksgiving” Table Activity: Use the Periodic Table as a “decoder” for Thanksgiving words! Use element atomic numbers and symbols to decode words or phrases associated with Thanksgiving, such as gravy, relatives, leftovers, cornucopia, etc. There are 35 words/phrases in total.

4. Thanksgiving Hypothesis & Variables Review:

• Part 1 – Write an “If…Then” hypothesis for Thanksgiving-themed scenarios and identify independent and dependent variables.
• Part 2 – Design simple experiments for Thanksgiving-related hypotheses.

5. Turkey Anatomy: In this activity, students will use clues in the definitions of turkey parts to find their place on a turkey. Students will see the difference between a turkey’s snood, caruncle, keel, and much more!

Teacher Notes:

• We use these Thanksgiving science activities as stations on the short week of Thanksgiving and have also found them useful as sub plans in November.
• INCLUDES ANSWER KEYS
• Please note: These resources are NOT editable.
• GO PAPERLESS! All included activities include Google Slides versions.
• Find lots more fun stuff in the holidays and fun section of our shop!