Heather Haupt

Equipping Families to Live Cultivated Lives


Lessons in Thanksgiving!

Written by 7 Comments

I love this time of year.  Really, I just love holidays.  They are so festive, fun and provide an excellent learning opportunity for my boys!  This year, the boys are counting down the days until we get to fly out to see their grandparents and experience a midwest Thanksgiving!

In keeping with the spirit and because planning can be so helpful in preparing our children for any holiday, I thought I would post links to past Thanksgiving learning projects we’ve done!  As you can tell, we love hands-on learning in these parts.  Give them a costume and we’re golden!

I would also love to hear any ideas that you all have.  There is a linky at the bottom and if you’ve blogged about how you celebrate and learn about Thanksgiving with your children, I’d love for you to share!  If you don’t have a blog, comments are also most welcome so we can have a central spot with lots of ideas!

Last year, we learned about what life was like on the Mayflower.  Our favorite activity was dressing up as boys on the journey over.  We ate food similar to what they ate (w/out the bugs, mold and extent of staleness) and slept in a replica we made of a family’s quarters on the Mayflower.  The boys loved it.  I for one am glad we don’t live at that time and that I have a nice king-sized bed!
This post also includes links to our favorite books on the Pilgrims!
Along with learning about the Mayflower, Xander was also learning about the story of Noah in Awana’s last year.  To gain prespective, we went out to our street and measured the dimensions of both the Mayflower and Noah’s Ark.  It was so helpful for my boys to visualize the sizes…

A child-friendly, eye appealing craft that is fun to play with and also use as a decoration.

Our adventure mapping the journey of the Mayflower and reviewing why they left the Old World for the New World.

Last year, we also had a co-op day, learning all about pilgrim life.  Our little group loved learning about planting corn, how instrumental Squanto’s help was, having a make-believe hunt, etc…
Several years ago, we made our first Turkey countdown.  It was such a hit that we did it again last year.  We incorporated learning about gratitude by writing down something we were thankful for each day.  When all the feathers were filled in, we were ready to celebrate!
Now I’d love to hear from you.  I will keep the linky option open for the entire month.  I love tucking away good ideas to use both this year and for next.  If you blog (or have blogged in the past) about how you plan on teaching or sharing Thanksgiving with your kids, feel free to leave a link so we can check it out!
Ideas for celebrating/learning about Thanksgiving could include: craft ideas, pilgrims, mayflower, religious freedom, gratitude, plants they grew, animals they hunted, etc…

If you post, feel free to grab the button below:


Lessons in Thanksgiving 
 

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Comments

  2. CherylinMA says

    Great compilation post. We did the corn planting activity with our history class a few years ago too. Thanks for the great ideas!

    Reply

  3. Myrtle says

    Hi,
    Thanks for the visit. When freezing eggs you can freeze them together (you just have to mix them.) It is a good idea to record the amount and label. If you are freezing egg yolks on their own you have to add salt or sugar. Here is a good site for figuring out quantities etc.. http://www.eclecticcooking.com/metric.htm
    You have to scroll down a bit to get to the eggs part!

    Reply

  6. Susanne Barrett says

    Here from the Hip Homeschooling Hop…lovely place you have here!

    Have you joined the Gratitude Community at A Holy Experience? It’s really wonderful!

    Reply

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