Thanksgiving School

Third Grade: Week Thirteen Wrap-Up

This week, we got to enjoy one of my favorite features of Adventures in My Father’s World–a week-long Thanksgiving unit.

This is something that I’ve done every year, anyway. But it was nice to have everything planned out for me for a change. Some of the books were new to us, (somehow we had never read The Thanksgiving Story, even though we have enjoyed the sister book, The Fourth of July Story), and we also used some old favorites (all of the Kate Waters books about colonial children). Some of the crafts were new, (somehow, we had managed to never make woven construction paper placemats before!), some we had done before, (hand and footprint turkeys are a yearly must around here), and some we had done before and skipped doing this time, (we didn’t feel like making paper grocery bag Indian vests again).

There were even dedicated science lessons for this week. There were estimating and measuring assignments, and I added the book From Seed to Pumpkin, particularly for Ladybug’s benefit, so we could see the life cycle of the pumpkin. There was even a fun experiment for discovering the density of a pumpkin, as well as growing your own plant using the pumpkin seeds from the previous estimating and measuring experiments.

I love that this was incorporated right into our school year. The unit is designed to be done whenever necessary in your school year, (although it is labeled as week 13, and is arranged in that spot in the teacher guide), whether you start earlier in the year, and so need to delay the Thanksgiving study, or if you start later, and need to do it even closer to the beginning. The flexibility of this program is another big must!

I wish that My Father’s World could find a way to add a similar Christmas unit to one of their programs. I’m thinking that their global curriculum, Exploring Countries and Cultures, would be the perfect opportunity to learn about Christmas around the world, (and would offer a nice counter-option to Winter Promise’s Children Around the World program, which does have such a unit). While I also create a Christmas unit every year, it would be fun to look at it with fresh eyes, and get some new ideas that I might otherwise overlook, or never think of at all!

What We’re Reading–Thanksgiving

I know I mentioned most of these books in my third grade reading list earlier this year, but there have been some additions, and I thought it would be helpful to have our Thanksgiving selections listed together in one place!

Thanksgiving School–Misc.

There are some ideas and activities I used for Thanksgiving that don’t really fit in any one day of school, so I’ll share them here.

FamilyFun is an excellent website for finding great activities to do with children. They have special holiday sections, and I got quite a few ideas there. It has become a new tradition to play their “Thanksgiving Day Parade Bingo,” (from the Thanksgiving TV Bingo section), while we watch the Macy’s Parade, and this year I even had our sheets laminated (there’s also a football version, but I’m not really into football, so I didn’t bother…). They also have some really cute coloring sheets, and we took advantage of several of those.

Unwrapped is one of Turkey’s favorite TV shows, because he loves watching how things are made. As luck would have it, there are several Thanksgiving episodes, and so we learned about how things like stuffing, gravy, and cranberries are made. I count this as educational, because they manage to cram a lot of information into just one episode, but Turkey and Bunny just think they’re getting to watch a favorite TV show!

We all really enjoyed watching The Real Story of Thanksgiving on the History Channel (even Ladybug liked it!). This show detailed this history of Thanksgiving from the very first one, through all of the changes it has seen over the years. Much of the show was light-hearted, but it was full of historical information and interesting facts. Did you know that domesticated turkeys (the kind we typically eat on Thanksgiving) are pure white? I think that was the biggest surprise for all us as we were watching!

I got the idea for the silhouettes that we made last week from Great Colonial America Projects. We didn’t really use the book too much this year, but it has some cool craft activities, and it also gives a lot of history mixed in with the projects.

We also watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving several times. The real gem on this disc is “The Mayflower Voyages” segment. While it may be a Peanuts show, it’s also incredibly historically accurate. I can’t believe how much Turkey and Bunny learned (and retained!) about the Pilgrims, just from the repeated watching of this movie.

Thanksgiving School–Day Eight

The last day of “Thanksgiving School” is always a fun day. We read a silly book, The Night Before Thanksgiving, which, just as it sounds, follows the same pattern as The Night Before Christmas. This story does an excellent job of highlighting most of American Thanksgiving traditions–turkey and pumpkin pie, visiting family, football, Pilgrims, and parades. It sadly doesn’t mention Who we are thanking on this holiday, but it is a secular book, after all, and you can’t get everything you want in one book.

Because we do need to learn a little something, we also read Milly and the Macy’s Parade. I found this book a few years ago, and while it is a fictionalized tale, it does give a good idea of how America’s most famous parade came about. It also helps children get a good feeling of what it might be like to be strangers in an established country, and how you might try to bring a little bit of “home” with you in any way you can.

Every holiday should include watching one fun, non-educational movie, so we picked By the Light of the Silvery Moon. It isn’t technically a Thanksgiving movie, but part of it does take place at Thanksgiving. It’s a fun movie, and there some hilarious scenes with a live turkey intended to be Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey and Bunny think it’s a great movie–their laughter was quite raucous!

We finally finished our “thankful turkey” today, too. It’s always fun to see what kind of things Turkey and Bunny come up with when giving thanks–some very sweet (learning about God, their family), some completely obvious (Legos), and some very surprising (the police–I’m assuming the public servants, not the band, but as Turkey is familiar with Rock Band, who knows?).

We have also made hand and footprint turkeys every year. I try not to reuse crafts too much, at least not yearly, but I think this is a special one, because it lets me keep a record of how much the children are growing. In Kindergarten, I had to do all of the cutting for Turkey and Bunny, (12 hands and 4 feet in total–it took forever!), because it was more exact than they could do at that point, but now they can do it all by themselves. This is one of the crafts that I make sure we save at the end of every year, and I know that I’ll love looking back on them someday!

Thanksgiving School–Day Seven

Day seven was our last “serious” day of Thanksgiving School (tomorrow is our equivalent of a party day). We started by reading another book in “The American Story” series: The New Americans. This book picks up where Exploration and Conquest left off, and details how the different colonies in America were settled, and what countries were responsible for the settlement of these colonies. Turkey and Bunny like this series so much (good-storytelling and excellent artwork) that they can’t wait to read the next one, about the French and Indian War. They’ll have to wait until we get it, though!

We also read a fictional story about what Thanksgiving was like in the 19th century–An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott. This is a heart-warming story about a group of siblings who work to prepare the Thanksgiving meal for their parents when an emergency surprises them on the holiday. Of course there are some mix-ups, but they still have a wonderful holiday, and their hard work is appreciated by everyone. I have an older edition of this book, and the illustrations are beautiful–I can’t speak to the illustrations in the newer edition, though.

Our craft for the day was supposed to be a felt and pipe cleaner turkey from another kit I picked up on clearance at Jo-Ann’s. We learned a lesson about craft kits, though–sometimes they just don’t work as advertised. The directions included with the kit were incorrect, and while I figured out what they were supposed to be, the pieces just didn’t work together the way they were supposed to. We regrouped, and I came up with an idea for turkey stick puppets–not as cute as what I had planned, but at least Turkey and Bunny could actually make them successfully. I’ve seen their Pilgrim puppets hunting their turkeys, and found the turkeys riding their paper plate Mayflowers, so I don’t think they’re too disappointed that we didn’t get to do our originally scheduled craft!

Thanksgiving School–Day Six

This is a short school week for us–only three days–but we still have some fun things planned. We’re taking a break from our regular Language Arts program (which we did use all of last week), but we’re still working on math review. We’re also still learning about the Pilgrims, Indians, and Thanksgiving traditions in America.

We started with the last of Kate Water’s books about life in colonial America: Tapenum’s Day. This is a fictional story of an Indian boy, who is trying to prove that he is a man. Turkey and Bunny were very interested in how an Indian boy might have spent his day (lots of hunting), and they were surprised (and kind of appalled) at how little supervision he had as he traveled around the area in which he lived.

We also read Native Homes, which is a really cool book about the different types of houses different Native American tribes used to live in. Of course there are the familiar teepees and wigwams, but also some less-known structures such as chickees. It was interesting to see the commonalities in many of the homes–for example, the shape of a wigwam is seen in other types of houses, even though different methods were used to construct them. Turkey and Bunny were also very curious about what would happen to the fire in most of the houses if it were to rain through the smoke vent (we did learn that at least some of the homes had special covers for the vent, but that meant that the house would fill with smoke).

No Native American craft for us, but I found directions for a traditional Native American “stick game” for us to play. I got the directions for making the playing pieces, plus the rules of the game from a really cool book called More Than Moccasins, which is part of an excellent series of craft/activity books called “A Kid’s Guide.” I used this book last year, too, and I got ideas for games (like the stick game, and another we played last year called hubbub), crafts (grocery sack Indian vests and Indian headbands), and food (last year we made Indian fry bread from scratch, and it was amazing!). There are tons of ideas in the book, and I’m sure we’ll keep using it until–well, I don’t even know. I can’t imagine a time we *wouldn’t* want to use it!

Thanksgiving School–Day Five

Since we learned about the life of a Pilgrim girl on Thursday, it seemed only fair that on Friday we learn about what it would have been like to be a Pilgrim boy in Samuel Eaton’s Day. This is, naturally, set up very much like the book we read about Sarah Morton, but Samuel’s day is quite different as he is a boy, and has different responsibilities. Like the other book, this was also photographed at Plimoth Plantation, and it also gives a great idea of what it was like to be part of a Pilgrim family.

In keeping with our “boy” theme, as well as continuing to learn about real people, on Friday we focused on Squanto, in Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving. This is a beautiful book, because of the way the author makes parallels between Squanto being sold as a slave, and the same thing happening to Joseph in the Bible. It is easy to see God’s hand in way the whole Thanksgiving story unfolded when reading this story.

We also read another book in the “If You…” series: If You Were at the First Thanksgiving. There is some overlap between this book and the Mayflower story, but there is enough detailed information to make it worth it. The question and answer format continues to be popular, and I look forward to using more of these books in future unit studies.

Our craft for the day was a Pilgrim boy to match the Pilgrim girl we made on Thursday. They can both ride in our paper plate Mayflowers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they also hunt the turkeys we’re going to be making next week!

This was also field trip day–we went to the St. Louis Art Museum to view their pre-Columbian and Native American art collections.

Thanksgiving School–Day Four

On Thursday, we learned about the lives of people (both real and fictional) who lived around the time of the first Thanksgiving. We started with another book by Kate Waters: Sarah Morton’s Day. These books are very popular with Turkey and Bunny, because they really show what it would have been like to be a child in Pilgrim days, and because the children featured in them were actual residents of Plimoth Plantation (although these accounts are likely fictionalized). They learn everything from how they ate (children standing up), to what they wore (lots of petticoats for the girls!), to what kind of chores they had (lots of them!). And the photos are all set at Plimoth Plantation, so they really get a feeling for what the homes looked like.

As long we were learning about a Pilgrim girl, we also decided to also learn about an Indian girl in The True Story of Pocahontas. This is a “Step Into Reading” book, which made it perfect for Turkey and Bunny to practice reading aloud. They really like learning about real people, so this was a good book for them, even if they were once again confronted with some of the injustices found in history.

CPH publishes a book that we read every year–Thanksgiving: A Harvest Celebration. I really like this one because it doesn’t shy away from mentioning God, and the fact that we should still be thankful to Him, not only on Thanksgiving, but every day.

Since we had focused on Pilgrim girls, our craft was a Pilgrim girl which will eventually go into our paper plate Mayflowers. I found a package of these crafts at Jo-Anns for around $1 on clearance, and I’ll be able to use them for a few years, including with Ladybug when she starts school, so I’m very please with my find!

Thanksgiving School–Day Three

Wednesday found our focus on the Mayflower. We started with On the Mayflower, a book I’ve been hoping to get for the last two years. I managed to grab a used copy on Amazon this summer at a great price, and it was great to finish the series by Kate Waters that we’ve been using since Kindergarten (more on the other books in following days!).

We also got to read a book that I remember reading over and over as a child–If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. I love the “If You…” series, because the books manage to answer all the questions children have about different events in history. We learned how clean (or not) the Pilgrims were, what they ate, what they were allowed to bring onboard, and many other things.

We read a second book in the “You Wouldn’t Want To…” series as well: You Wouldn’t Want to Sail on the Mayflower. Even with all they learned about life on the ship, Turkey and Bunny thought that maybe they would have done it, anyway. They never cease to surprise me!

Our craft for the day was making a paper plate Mayflower. It will be partnered with later crafts from the week–we’ll be adding a pilgrim boy and girl to the ship. I love paper plate crafts!

Thanksgiving School–Day Two

On Tuesday, we started focusing more on the colonization of America. We started by reading Exploration and Conquest, book two of “The American Story” series, and discussing the treatment of the native people in North American by the European explorers. Turkey decided at this point that he doesn’t much like history, because of how badly the people were treated. It did give us an opportunity for a great discussion of the mistakes people have made in the past, and why it’s important to study history and learn from those mistakes.

We also read a more light-hearted book–You Wouldn’t Want to be an American Colonist. This is another great series, which focuses on the bad, bizarre, and occasionally gross things that have accompanied some of the most notable events in history. After much giggling and exclamation, we finished the book, and decided it was for the best that we were not early settlers in America!

In keeping with our colonial theme, we made silhouettes–Turkey and Bunny thought they looked really cool, but were definitely not fond of how still they had to sit to get the picture right. I loved how Turkey’s eyelashes were visible in his silhouette!