Literacy Snack Parade Balloons Read-Aloud

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One of my most favorite Thanksgiving traditions with my family is watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade together. I host Thanksgiving but make sure everything is ready and prepped to go, turkeys in the oven etc, so I can spend this awesome time with my family. The book that we’re reading this weeks Literacy Snack Parade Balloons Read-Aloud is Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet.

This book is the true story of the puppeteer of Macy’s parade. In the book you meet Tony Sarg, puppeteer extraordinaire! It tells the story of the puppeteer Tony Sarg, capturing his genius, his dedication, his zest for play, and his long-lasting gift to America—the inspired helium balloons that would become the trademark of Macy’s Parade.

In the story, you learn that they used to have live animals in the parade but young children started getting scared so eventually he created the balloons which at first were all animals. So this week, we’ll be making our own animal balloon snack.

THIS ACTIVITY WORKS WELL WITH

Ingredients

For each student you’ll need

3 animals cookies–crackers

1 pulled apart piece of a Twizzler Pull-n-Peel

Assemble

Have the students pull apart their twizzler piece into 3 different pieces to use as 3 different balloon strings. Give each student 3 cookies or crackers. The students can lay the twizzlers down coming from the bottom of the animals as pretend balloon strings.

Free Printable

While your kiddos are enjoying their snack, I made a free printable for them to work on. They get to draw in their favorite balloons during the Macy’s Parade. The could be ones they saw in the book or ones they’ve seen on tv at home.

You can download the Literacy Snack Parade Balloons Read-Aloud free printable from my TeachersPayTeachers store below.

I also have a fun scavenger hunt for your students to do while watching the parade with their families on Thanksgiving. You can find the digital version here and the printable version here.