Here are Thanksgiving themed activities to keep your students working on technology skills in the computer lab ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
We’re going to do a whole series of guides for holiday themed computer lab activities this year. Keep your eye out for more holiday activity posts as the year goes on!
Thanksgiving Tech Skills Activities for All Grades
Use these templates, activities, examples of projects created by students and tweets from classroom teachers to inspire your activities in your classroom for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Activities Bundle
I put together a Thanksgiving Activities for the Computer Lab Bundle that has something for everyone, K-5. This includes:
- Thanksgiving Digital Pixel Art
- Thanksgiving Sheets/Excel Digital Mystery Pictures
- Thanksgiving Digital Hundreds Charts Mystery Pictures
- Thanksgiving CVC Words Digital Puzzles
- Thanksgiving Digital Phonics Drag and Drop
If you would like students to work on technology skills while doing fun Thanksgiving themed activities in the computer lab, this bundle is for you!
Primary Thanksgiving Activities
Thanksgiving Games to practice Tech Skills on Digipuzzle.net and ABCya
There are currently 45 games tagged in the Thanksgiving category on digipuzzle.net and another 6 games featured on ABCya. The games are a mix of academic content and tech skills, making them perfect practice for our youngest students.
Thanksgiving Directed Drawing
Directed drawings are more than time-fillers. As tech teachers, this is a great opportunity to have a quick discussion about using YouTube and other video platforms for educational purposes. Students will then practice listening skills, following directions, elements of art, and creativity!
Middle Elementary Thanksgiving Activities
Thanksgiving Graphs
Use a program like Sheets to create graphs on topics such as favorite food or Thanksgiving Day activity. They can gather data for their graphs by polling the class with Forms!
Thanksgiving ASCII Art Challenges
Have your students attempt some Thanksgiving images with ASCII. ASCII artwork is created with the symbols and characters that you have available to you on your computer keyboard.
Upper Elementary Thanksgiving Activities
Thanksgiving Infographic
Have students do research and use a program like Canva to create a Thanksgiving infographic on topics such as:
- Ways to be thankful
- Historical tidbits
- Thanksgiving spending trends
- Green decorating ideas
- Common Thanksgiving activities
Code with Tynker
Students can work on their coding skills by programming and customizing Turkey Trot or Turkey Jump.
Explore an Interactive Storymap
Mapping the Thanksgiving Harvest is an amazing digital resource to learn about Thanksgiving foods. Your students will learn lots of fun facts as well as how to interact with a digital story map. They can even go on to create their own on another Thanksgiving topic, such as locations of their extended family or the migration of the Pilgrims from Europe.
Bonus! Middle/High School Activity Ideas
Using your handy dandy Google Sheets notebook, can your students deduce the who, what, when, where, and how of this mystery digital breakout game so that everybody can enjoy Thanksgiving?
This project leads students through coding a Healthy Meal App using simplified JavaScript. They can design their app to build a healthier Thanksgiving dinner, or focus on accommodating for dietary needs. Is someone coming to dinner who is vegetarian or allergic to nuts? Customize the meal suggestions for their dietary needs and share the app with them!
