Thanksgiving Line Tracing for Preschoolers
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These FREE Thanksgiving Line Tracing activities are fun and valuable ways for preschoolers to practice their pre-writing abilities and control their fine motor skills.
Adding these activities to your Thanksgiving lesson plans will benefit your children and take only a few minutes to prepare them.
The Thanksgiving Tracing activities pack includes six pages with different tracing activities for any developmental stage of your children, and you can get it at the end of this post.
Importance of Tracing Activities
When you offer preschoolers multiple opportunities to trace, you are helping them refine essential skills such as:
- Fine Motor Skills: Tracing builds strength and coordination between their hands and fingers, allowing them to better grasp the writing and painting utensils and control their movements.
- Hand-eye Coordination: They have to look at the lines and move their hands along them to trace them.
- Creativity and Drawing Skills: When they create movements to trace the lines, they are making connections about how to use the same movements to draw independently.
- Concentration and Focus: They have to follow the lines with their writing tools.
- Visual-spatial Awareness: Tracing helps preschoolers understand where their body is in a particular space and place and learn the appropriate spatial vocabulary (below, behind, next to, etc.). It also allows them to practice that vocabulary and make sense of the relationship between the lines.
How to Use These Thanksgiving Line Tracing Activities
These activities can be used in many ways, such as:
- Small group activity
- Writing center option
- Take-home game
- Quiet area option
- As a cutting practice.
To prepare these low-prep activities, print them on white cardstock, laminate them, or place them in a dry-erase pocket if you want to use them multiple times. Alternatively, you can print them on regular white paper for a single use.
Extension Activities
To offer your preschoolers more variation, instead of using pencils, crayons, dry-erase markers, or regular markers to trace the lines, they can use:
- Small manipulatives, including mini erasers, buttons, pom-poms, and mini turkeys.
- Their index finger.
- Stickers.
These activities can be used alone or in combination with other activities. Check out these other free packs and grab the ones you like HERE.
Thanksgiving-related Storybooks
There are many Thanksgiving-related books. Below, you will find some of my favorites. You can find some at your local library, a used bookstore, or on Amazon. These are some I like. If you want to add some to your collection, click on the titles, and my affiliate links will take you to the right page in seconds.
- The Story of the Pilgrims by Katharine Ross. This exciting book retells the story of the pilgrims’ voyage across the Atlantic to the first Thanksgiving feast, using colorful and beautiful illustrations that will delight your young historians.
- Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks! By Sutherland. This book used simple text and colorful illustrations to introduce preschoolers to the joy of celebrating Thanksgiving with family and friends and to be thankful for everything and every day.
- Little Critter: Just a Special Thanksgiving by Mercer Mayer. This lovely character brings to life the Thanksgiving celebration with his family as they give thanks during this holiday.
- Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson. This book offers beautiful illustrations and playful text to tell the story of a Bear who has come up with a big dinner to celebrate family and friendship.
- The Night Before Thanksgiving by Natasha Wing is a fun book about families getting together to prepare and enjoy a feast during Thanksgiving.
- Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes. This book uses simple text and striking illustrations to remind kids and adults alike about the little details that make each day enjoyable and a warm and genuine way to share.
- 10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnston is a silly, fun, rhyming story about ten turkeys that teaches children how to count backward.
- How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace is a hilarious picture book that combines STEAM concepts and traps with a silly story and fun illustrations, perfect for the Thanksgiving theme.
- How Many Turkeys Can You Find? by Holiday Puzzle Sensations. The children will love this book’s vibrant Thanksgiving pictures and will be motivated to solve the number of riddles on its pages.
- 1,2, 3 All About Fall: A Counting Book from 1 to 20 by Little Pear Books. Children will love learning to count from 1 to 20, along with fall-themed vocabulary, in this book celebrating autumn and Thanksgiving.
- One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy. This book’s simple rhythmic text and autumn-colored illustrations are suitable for practicing counting and sharing the history and fun of Thanksgiving with young children.
Pin It For Later
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it, pin it to your Thanksgiving board on Pinterest for later.
I hope you enjoy this printable and help your preschoolers have fun tracing these lines on Thanksgiving week. To get the FREE pack, click on the link below and enter your information for an immediate download.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.D. Please let me know if you like this pack or need me to create something specific for your preschoolers.
This design is steller! You most certainly know how to keep a reader amused. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Wonderful job. I really enjoyed what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!
Hello Ashley! Thank you so much for your kind words. I truly appreciate your feedback.