Thanksgiving week is here! My plan for this week is to finish up our Thanksgiving curriculum on Wednesday. That leaves Thursday and Friday for celebrating Thanksgiving and taking a break. 🙂
Today, day six of our curriculum, is centered around all of the things that the Indians taught the Pilgrims to do. Without the help and generosity of the Indians, the Pilgrims surely would have perished.
So, to get today started, I brought my two boys into our little school room and asked them what they have learned about the Pilgrims and Indians so far. Who were the Pilgrims? What did they decide to do? Who were the Indians? How did they help the Pilgrims?
From there, I transitioned into our reading of the First Thanksgiving. I cannot say enough how great this version of the first Thanksgiving has been for us. Reading it every day to them has not even gotten old!
After the story, we added two more leaves to our Thankfulness Tree. I can see how my boys are starting to connect the dots between the thankful attitude of the Pilgrims and the importance of being thankful for their own blessings. The pilgrims were thankful even in their suffering…my boys have SO MUCH and are starting to realize it!
After gluing on their foliage, I laid out in front of them the next page to complete in their “My Thanksgiving Book.” They glued together yellow and green construction paper to make little ears of corn. I also hole-punced a gold piece of construction paper; the boys glued the dots from that onto the corn to make it look a little more real.
The sentence on today’s book page said “They planted corn, picked berries, and caught fish.” These are all things that the Indians taught them to do.
While the boys worked, we talked about living off the land. The pilgrims didn’t know how to grow corn, so the Indians taught them. They learned how to identify just the right kind of berries for eating. And they caught fish out of the rivers!
Upon completing their page, we got ready for our fun activity. The boys love this part of our day!
To celebrate the generosity of the Indians and their teaching the Pilgrims how to live off the land, today’s activity is:
Fishing for Letters!
This particular game is one of my favorites, for it not only allows the boys to go pretend fishing, but to practice their alphabet as well!
To make the “fishing pole”, simply tie a piece of string to some type of stick (I used a dowel rod). At the other end of the string, attach a small magnet.
I cut out 26 construction paper fish. On one side of the fish, I drew eyes and a smile. I also put one letter of the alphabet on every fish.
So that your “fishing pole” can pick up a fish, put a paper clip onto every one!
Have the fish all laid out on the floor. Hand your child the fishing pole, and tell him that it’s time to go fishing just like the Pilgrims did! Tell him that you are the Indian, he is a Pilgrim, and he has to catch exactly which fish you tell him to. 🙂
Call out a letter, and have him “catch that fish!!”
My boys L-O-V-E-D this!
Have fun in the wild outdoors in your den. 🙂 Their is nothing quite like bringing a story to life for young children.
