Thanksgiving Dramatic Play Pack

About this resource

Dramatic play is hard to run when the paper work is missing. Here the Thanksgiving-dinner cafe is on paper: children read a menu, take an order, count tickets with tally marks, play the host, cook, server and guest, then write a thank-you card and what they are thankful for. Nothing to draw or look up first. No clip art to clutter a page.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (38 pages)

• 22 student pages: 1 menu board, 16 work pages in 6 formats (3 levels each where the format has them), and 5 cut-out prop pages
• 1 menu of 8 foods; each food takes a number of tickets. No money and no prices anywhere
• 8 guest name tags, 8 table signs, 6 cafe signs, 6 job badges and 12 tickets to cut out
• 9 guests who order on the order pad (3 pages), 6 guests to paste foods for (2 cut and paste pages)
• 6 guest checks across 3 pages: trace, draw, then count the tally marks and write the total tickets
• 2 thank-you card pages and 3 "I am thankful" pages
• 1 set-up page (six jobs, what goes on the table), 1 answer key made from the same data as the pages
• 1 tracker (16 pages), 1 class progress grid, 1 team note, 1 home page with 6 tickets to cut, 1 filled example (an invented student), 1 phrase bank (16 starters)
• 1 binder cover and 6 divider tabs with a spine label to cut out
• Start Here, a how-to-read-a-page page and a contents page

The Six Formats

1. Menu (3 pages): trace the 8 foods, write them from a word bank, then make a menu of your own.

2. Order Pad (3 pages): a guest talks in a bubble; the child writes one food, two foods, then each food and how many.

3. Cut and Paste (2 pages): one strip of food words; paste each guest's food. Some words are left over.

4. Guest Check (3 pages): trace the tally marks, draw them, then count them and write the total tickets.

5. Thank-You Card (2 pages): fill one in from a word bank, then write your own.

6. I Am Thankful (3 pages): trace and finish a sentence, write two, then write more with a picture box.

Each page carries dots, not words, so children at one table cannot see who has which level.

Built For The Child Holding The Page

A big "My name" line, one short instruction with an icon, large rounded type, primary writing lines and answer boxes a child's handwriting fits in. Nothing on a student page is written for an adult.

Easy Cutting

Pieces touch edge to edge, so every cut is one straight line. Every cutting page has at least 5 pieces, each at least 1.1 inches on every side.

Type In, Or Print

Name lines, writing lines, answer boxes, the tracker, the class grid, the team note and the home page are type-in fields in any PDF reader. The pages print clean in black and white. This is a fillable PDF; it is not a Google Slides, Docs or PowerPoint file.

Who This Is For

Kindergarten through 2nd grade classrooms, self-contained and resource rooms, centers and small groups in November. The home page sends the same job to a family; the team note hands off what changed since the last meeting.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

Reading, writing and counting practice inside a pretend cafe, with the record-keeping around it. It is not a probe, a goal bank or a score sheet, and makes no claim about any student's age or progress. It teaches nothing about the history of the holiday. The cafe's own rules get a blank line for your wording.