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Thanksgiving is getting closer by the minute and with the holiday approaching so quickly, now is the perfect time to start adding some more turkey-themed activities to your preschooler or kindergartners’ day!
These Thanksgiving pattern block picture mats can fill your home or classroom with tasks that incorporate holiday vocabulary, pictures, and objects while giving your little learners the chance to work on their shapes, hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and so much more!
Within this download, you’ll find pictures of corn, a turkey, the Mayflower, a cornucopia, a barn, a dinner plate, and a pumpkin so you’ll have plenty of Thanksgiving-themed fun to keep you and your little busy throughout the holiday!
Thanksgiving Pattern Block Mats
These beautifully colored picture mats are an easy and fun way to incorporate math skills as well as STEM activities into your home or classroom. There are a total of seven mats that you can print off and laminate.
Place some pattern blocks out for the children to explore and see what happens.
Once the mats have been laminated, you can either use them in a small group setting or for individual activities. There are so many skills that these mats touch on that you will be able to use them all month without the children getting bored.
How To Use Thanksgiving Pattern Block Picture Mats in Math
Both younger and older children can have fun by exploring the geometrical shapes and colors of the pattern blocks.
At first, put out the block shapes for the children to explore and let them create without the mats.
Build their language skills by creating a list of Thanksgiving objects that the children think they can create with the blocks.
For the younger children, you can work on readiness skills such as color and shape identification.
After they’ve had a chance to explore, bring out the mats and talk about the pictures and how they relate to Thanksgiving. Give the students time to create the pictures on the mats.
You can encourage further learning by asking the children how many of each color block they used, what happens when you put certain shapes together, and if there would be any other way to create the picture.
All these activities help to develop geometric vocabulary, an understanding of shapes and their relationships, measurement, counting, and problem-solving.
Thanksgiving Pattern Block Picture Mats In STEM Learning
Pattern blocks are a great way to encourage critical thinking and visual skills that STEM learning promotes.
These concepts can be taught along with spatial relations as the children explore the blocks and the pattern mats.
Students will use problem-solving skills and critical thinking skills as they move, manipulate, and compare the shapes. They can even make predictions about how many blocks they will need to complete the picture.
For older children, these pattern block picture mats can help begin to introduce language about area, symmetry, and congruency. They can also work in groups to put the pictures together which builds social skills such as turn-taking, sharing, and working as a team.
Extending the Lesson
This lesson can be extended into other holidays and seasons by either providing the children with white paper and having them create their own seasonal mats (snowflakes, snowmen, etc) or by printing off pattern block picture mats for other seasons.
Challenge your students to create the picture on the desk in front of them instead of on the mat. Exploring shapes and their relations can be a fun way to take the stress out of math.
