Saturday, November 26, 2016

Thanksgiving Activities!

I took a break from learning about countries so we could learn a bit about Thanksgiving!


Our FIAR book was Cranberry Thanksgiving. And here are the other books we read:

  • This Is the Feast by Diane Shore
  • Squanto's Journey by Joseph Bruchac
  • Thanksgiving Day by Anne Rockwell
  • The Story of the Pilgrims by Katherine Ross
  • Pete the Cat: The First Thanksgiving by James Dean
  • Bear Gives Thanks by Karma Wilson
  • Mouskin's Thanksgiving by Edna Miller (which is out of print)
  • Cranberry Autumn by Wendy & Harry Devlin

    (You may notice that the list is slightly different than the books on my plan because I wasn't able to find all my intended titles at the local library, so I subbed in some books that our library did have!)

    My personal favorites were This Is the Feast and Squanto's Journey. Juanito was fascinated by Squanto because he has a bow and arrow in many books, so it was fun to explore Squanto's life in more depth. And This Is the Feast has beautiful illustrations that most remind me of Plimouth Plantation from when I visited as a child! I recommend checking out the Plimouth Plantation website for more information on the first Thanksgiving!


    Since our FIAR book was Cranberry Thanksgiving, we made some fun cranberry play-dough! It actually entertained my kids for over thirty minutes! I highly recommend it...the kids enjoyed the play-dough so much that we made it to share with our co-op group!


    And since we were learning about Thanksgiving, we had to make a variety of turkeys! I plan on using them to decorate the table on Thanksgiving. Glueing always seems to be a big hit!


    We also wrote letters to our Mana kids about fall! I like trying to point my kids' attention to other kids and thought that this would be a great time to write fall themed letters. I used two templates and I don't remember where I got them... If you would like copies of the templates, send me an email at berry31(at)gmail.com. It is a great activity for my kids to practice Spanish since their writing buddies are from Honduras! And Juanito even learned how to write Oscar's name for his letter!


    We did narrations for the story of Thanksgiving. It was interesting hearing their thoughts! This is Juanito's:
    They ate lobster and corn. They had a boat and sailed there. They were called Pilgrims. They were celebrating the feast. It was thanksgiving day. The Indians went to the feast too because they're nice. Squanto was an arrow guy, he shoot arrows.


    And Rosie's:
    They ate comida. The baby ate it, her papi hold her. Comen maize. They went to a barco. El barco swimmed. They plant maize.


    Juanito really wanted to be Squanto for Thanksgiving, and so we threw together a quick costume. Rosie wanted to be a Pilgrim mami. Again, the Plimouth Plantation page is a great resource! My brother has some better pictures, while Rosie was still wearing her coif. But the kids had a blast celebrating in costume!


    We also made Plimouth Plantation with Lego...the kids directed the building of the houses (one has a very authentic slide) and in lieu of creating Pilgrims and Wampanoag characters, they thought it would be better to bring their other Lego characters...


    And, of course, we had to make some food! We made the cranberry bread recipe from the back of Cranberry Thanksgiving and we made some cranberry sauce. I used this recipe for the cranberry sauce (but without the zest). It is super easy to make and so delicious!!

    Again, we are taking a break from countries but I hope to include some country studies in our advent plans, which should be forthcoming on this blog.

    To view my complete plan for the year, click here. And here are the previous countries in the series:
  • China
  • Spain
  • Tanzania
  • France
  • Colombia




    About Hannah Hinojosa...Hannah is a long time Compassion sponsor and writes about her sponsorship journey at Because of Shamim. In addition to being a wife and mother, she is a part-time math professor and loves to read.
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