Thanksgiving

THANKSGIVING SCIENCE

	Science and parades? Melissa Sweet’s wonderful Balloons Over Broadway (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011) is the story of how puppeteer Tony Sarg invented the giant balloon characters featured each year in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The illustrations are fantastic. For ages 4-8, but so appealing that it will be loved by all.
	Invent your own parade float? See November STEM Ideas for activities to accompany Balloons Over Broadway.
	From National Geographic, learn all about wild turkeys.
	Why are turkeys called turkeys? See Fowl Play? The Twisted Linguistics of Turkey.
	From Wired magazine, Science Supersized Your Turkey Dinner explains how just about every crop and animal consumed at the first Thanksgiving has changed over the past four hundred years. Turkeys have nearly tripled in size. (Check out the graph.)
	From Kidzone, The American Turkey has basic turkey-themed information and activities for kids.
	Why Are Turkeys Genetically Modified? discusses genetic modification and selective breeding, and has a turkey photo gallery and a video on muscle genes.
	From Scientific American, The Science of Thanksgiving addresses such questions as “Does turkey make you sleepy?” and “Which is better: white meat or dark?”
	Extra cranberries? Make Spy Juice. A.k.a. invisible ink.
	From the American Chemical Society, Chemistry of Thanksgiving Food has a great list of cool experiments.
	Steve Spangler’s Amazing Egg Drop is a Thanksgiving tradition at our house. It’s a thrill. Try it!
	What to do with the leftovers?From National Geographic’s The Plate, find out How Leftover Turkey Launched the TV Dinner.

THANKSGIVING MATH

	In Tony Johnston’s zany 10 Fat Turkeys (Scholastic, 2004), readers count down from ten to zero as ten turkeys, balanced on a fence, topple one by one as they variously swing from a vine, roller skate, swan dive, and balance bricks – all to the refrain of GOBBLE GOBBLE WIBBLE WOBBLE. For ages 2-5.
	Laurie Krauss Melmed’s The First Thanksgiving Day (HarperCollins, 2003) is a counting story, starting with one little Pilgrim boy: “1 dressed in linen/sitting in a tree/dreaming of the tall, strong ship/on which he crossed the sea.” For ages 3-6.
	Thanksgiving and Turkey Math, Science, and Social Studies Activities is a creative list, including a printable Roll a Turkey game and a favorite Thanksgiving foods graph.
	Thanksgiving by the Numbers is a cool infographic of Thanksgiving statistics. (The U.S. produces five billion pumpkins a year.)