DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Thanksgiving Word Mining

Print out the template and make as many common words as you can from one of our Thanksgiving phrases.  Choose from:

• Happy Thanksgiving
• Mayflower
• Plymouth Rock

This is good spelling practice for young children (and a challenge for adults too -- just ask my husband -- he had to help me with the sample answers sheet *wink*).

Word Mining Tips

• Some people find it useful to rearrange the letters they have available in alphabetical order or grouped by consonants and vowels before they start mining.
   
  For example, if your word mining phrase is "Happy Birthday" you might find it useful to rearrange the letters:
  • alphabetically:                 a a b d h h i p p r t y y
    OR
  • by consonants/vowels:   a a i y y     b d h h p p r t
• Talk to the children about using "rhymes" to help fill in more words.  For example, if you find the word Rat (using "Happy Birthday" as our word mining example) encourage the children to replace the first letter (R) in Rat with some of the other consonants available to come up with Bat, Hat, Pat, THat 

Word Mining Rules:

• Words that require a capital letter are not allowed (names like David or Sally).
• Words that are pluralized simply by adding an "s" are not allowed (cats, dogs, owls) though their singular is allowed (cat, dog, owl).
• Words that require punctuation are not allowed (ex:  can't, don't).
• To make word mining more challenging, you can also disallow 1, 2 and 3 letter words.  However, if you're doing this with younger children I recommend allowing them to form words with as many letters as they like.

Templates:

• Close template window when done printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

"Happy Thanksgiving" word mine template         color   or    B&W

with letters rearranged alphabetically                   color   or    B&W

example answers (not all inclusive, but gives a good sampling)     answers

"Plymouth Rock" word mine template         color   or    B&W

with letters rearranged alphabetically         color   or    B&W

example answers (not all inclusive, but gives a good sampling)     answers

"Mayflower" word mine template             color   or    B&W

with letters rearranged alphabetically     color   or    B&W

example answers (not all inclusive, but gives a good sampling)     answers

Printable version of these instructions

Thanksgiving printables for kids

Turkey preschool lesson plan ideas