Six days down, and two to go!
Rudy and Mark are so funny…their little brains have been pumped full of Thanksgiving facts for over a week now. I’ll spy on them playing together in their room and see them hiding their Bibles from the mean old king (Day One), or playing Indians and Pilgrims. Haha!
I am so thrilled that the repetition of every day’s lesson has not worn on my boys. They seem to look forward to the story more and more each day…I think they enjoy helping me tell the story now that they are so familiar with it. 🙂
So this morning when I called the boys for Thanksgiving story time, they came a-running. We went through the story of the First Thanksgiving, and today I asked them what their favorite parts were….of course, it was how the Pilgrims had to hide their Bibles from the mean old King. 🙂
We moved on from the story to the Thankfulness Tree. Today, Mark was thankful for Baby Mae and Rudy was thankful for Bibles…warms my heart! 🙂
Next, it was time to complete the next page of their homemade book, “My Thanksgiving Book.” Today’s task was to put together a construction paper turkey, complete with feathers and googly eyes.
The sentence at the bottom of the page said, “They hunted turkey.” I knew that this was going to be quite the exciting topic for my outdoors-y, gun-loving boys.
While they were putting together their turkey, I reminded them of everything the Indians had taught the Pilgrims: how to plant crops, how to pick berries, how to catch fish, and how to hunt for turkeys.
I said it…the magic word, “HUNT.” I instantly had their attention. 🙂
I asked them, “How do you think you hunt for turkeys?” Oh, the answers were hilarious…
So this led us straight into our game…
Hunting for Turkeys!!
To prepare for this game, I had already printed and cut out 14 of each: turkey tracks, mouse tracks, and bobcat tracks. (I found all of the tracks on Google Images and just pasted them into a Word document.)
In the back of the house, I made a path of turkey tracks leading to a stuffed turkey. I allowed the tracks to wind around and over things, but made it easy enough to follow.
This is the start of the turkey trail. I started in the kitchen and wound it all the back to Rudy’s room.
I used the mouse and bobcat tracks to confuse the turkey trail. The mouse and bobcat tracks would cross over the turkey trail and wind all around it.
Now I’m starting to fill in the turkey trail with other tracks.
Before I brought the boys back to where the “turkey trail” was, I explained to them about following an animal’s tracks so that you could find it.
To show them what an animal track was, I traced their footprint onto a piece of paper. “Every person’s and every animal’s foot leaves a footprint in the dirt. And since every animal has it’s own kind of foot, every animal leaves its own kind of footprint.”
“If you want to find a turkey in the woods, you have to know what a turkey footprint looks like and follow it!”
I then showed them a picture of a turkey footprint. “This is what we’re looking for! Don’t follow any other animal track, only the turkey…we’re going turkey hunting!”
So we grabbed our guns (toy, of course), and ran to the back of the house. I showed them the start of the turkey trail and let them have at it. They loved the myriad of track types!
And the hunt is on! First obstacle…following the trail under the high chair!
The elusive turkey leads them underneath the crib!
Getting close!
He found it!
After much deliberating and analyzing, they finally made their way to where the turkey was hiding…I’ll just put it this way, the turkey didn’t even have a chance to put up a fight. 🙂
And yes, they brought their dead turkey into the kitchen, threw it into a pot, and cooked it. 🙂
So today was another fun day learning about and celebrating the first Thanksgiving. My boys have learned so much about the life of the Pilgrims over the last week: the difficulty of the journey on the Mayflower, how they built log cabins, planting crops and fishing, and now…turkey hunting!
I have a feeling that my boys really really wish that we were real-life Pilgrims. 🙂
