Keep your piano skills sharp in between Thanksgiving dinner, pie and holiday shopping. Download our Thanksgiving seasonal activity packet for Early Elementary (Units 1-4), Elementary levels (Units 5-8+).
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What you’ll find inside the Thanksgiving Piano Packet:
Celebrate Thanksgiving with this colorful packet of music theory fun sheets! Four different levels will serve up just what you need to improve your music skills.
Units 1-2
Identify letter names on the keyboard with a fun Thanksgiving Turkey color-by-note, a delicious piano key pies worksheet. Tell whether a note is a line note or a space note on the staff with a cornucopia matching page. Three pages that cover the following skills:
- Keyboard note names
- Identifying line notes and space notes
Units 3-4
Practice letter names on the keyboard and on the staff with a Thanksgiving Turkey keyboard note names coloring page, a Thanksgiving dinner notespeller feast, piano key pies, and a colorful autumn-themed grand staff fill-in-the-note-names page. Make your sense of rhythm count with a fun fall foliage rhythm worksheet, then practice identifying basic chords (I or V7) on the keyboard with a chord cornucopia matching sheet. Six pages cover the following skills:
- Keyboard note names
- Treble and bass staff note names
- Counting rhythms with eighth, quarter, and half notes and quarter rests
- Grand staff note names
- Identifying I and V7 chords on the keyboard
Units 5-6
Sharpen your musical staff skills with a Thanksgiving Turkey staff color-by-note, Thanksgiving dinner notespeller feast, and a colorful autumn-themed grand staff fill-in-the-note-names page. Learn to pick out major and minor pentascales with a pentascale pies page. Challenge your sixteenth note rhythm skills with a fall foliage rhythm worksheet, and identify I, IV, and V7 chords with a keyboard chord cornucopia matching page. Six pages cover the following skills:
- Treble and bass staff note names
- Identifying major and minor pentascales on a keyboard
- Counting rhythms with sixteenth, eighth, quarter, half, and dotted notes, and quarter rests.
- Grand staff note names
- Identifying I, IV, and V7 chords on the keyboard
Units 7-8
Review ledger line notes with an advanced Thanksgiving Turkey color-by-note, Thanksgiving dinner notespeller, and autumn-themed fill in the letter names on the staff. Try counting out some fall foliage rhythms with sixteenth notes, identify major and minor pentascale pies that start on sharp or flat keys, and finish off your music theory feast with a major or minor chord cornucopia matching page. Six pages cover the following skills:
- Treble and bass staff note and ledger line note names
- Counting rhythms with sixteenth, eighth, quarter, half, and dotted notes, and half, quarter, and eighth rests
- Identifying major and minor pentascales that begin on sharp or flat notes
- Grand staff ledger line note names
- Identify major and minor chords on treble and bass staff
What songs are good to play at Thanksgiving?
Over the River and Through the Woods is a popular song to sing and play at Thanksgiving time. It tells the story of going on a sleigh ride to Grandmother’s house to enjoy favorite foods at Thanksgiving dinner. The lyrics were originally published as a poem in 1844. No one knows who first set it to music, but it has become an iconic Thanksgiving song.
The song of gratitude, For Health and Strength, is a simple round that’s fun to sing together as a family. Listen to the melody, try singing it a few times all together, and then break into two groups. After the first group sings “For health and strength,” the first group goes on to the next line of the song while the second group starts from the beginning. You’ll hear an example of this song sung as a round if you click the link above and watch the video.
What are some good Thanksgiving hymns?
While there are many songs of praise and thanksgiving, three traditional Thanksgiving hymns stand out as the ones that are most commonly sung to celebrate Thanksgiving in America:
For the Beauty of the Earth is a beautiful English hymn that was written by Folliot S. Pierpoint in 1864. It speaks of gratitude for the beauty of nature and the joy of having family and friends.
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come is another traditional Thanksgiving hymn that comes from England. Henry Alford wrote the lyrics in 1844 to celebrate and express gratitude for the harvest.
We Gather Together is a beloved hymn that was originally from Denmark. It was written in 1597 to celebrate a victory against the kingdom of Spain and the freedom that it won the Dutch people to gather together and worship. It’s a song of thanks for independence and religious freedom. Dutch immigrants brought it to America, where it became a popular song at Thanksgiving time.
What famous Christmas Song was meant to be a Thanksgiving song?
While no one knows for sure if this is true, rumor has it that “Jingle Bells” was first performed at a Thanksgiving concert put on by a church choir. The composer, James Pierpont, was the music director of a Unitarian Church in Boston where his brother was minister. It’s not hard to imagine the countryside around Boston already deep in snow by Thanksgiving time, so “One Horse Open Sleigh,” as it was originally titled, would have been a fitting addition to a musical celebration of Thanksgiving. Only later did the song become associated with Christmas.
Happy Thanksgiving!