Becoming Young Pilgrims

Thanksgiving.  The holiday that has been stereotyped into oblivion.  The holiday that is all about Turkey, with a capital T, and the Redskins/Cowboys game.  I hope that RGIII skips on the tryptophan this year and saves it all for Tony Romo.

Thanksgiving is a beloved holiday, but it just cannot compete with its festive peer that looms a mere month and a few days after it.

Except in my classroom.  In my classroom, Thanksgiving is king.



At last we have begun our study of horn books and religious tolerance, of feast and of famine, of the people who set sail nearly 400 years ago for a chance to live the way that they wanted to.

We marvel at the details.  The pilgrims and the sailors on the Mayflower had a ship as large as two trucks, but it was not big enough.  We try to figure out why the beef and fish needed to be salted in order to survive the trip.  We try to imagine how life would feel on a dark and cold ship for 2 months and 3 days.  We try to feel the excitement that the pilgrims might have felt when they at last saw land, and the fear they might have had when they had to start life from scratch.

Our favorite topic is always the Pilgrim kids.  What would life have been like for these kids?  We start to find many more differences than similarities.

Great cover, Hannah!

We dress differently, sure.  We also live, work, and even eat very differently.  The pilgrim kids had to work as hard as the adults did.  They made their own mattresses by finding materials like feathers, pine needles, leaves, and corn husks.  They were in charge of cooking large roasts by turning the food on a spit.  This process often took an entire day.

Natalie refines her compare and contrast skills.

They had no spoons for dining.  Instead, they used shells and even their fingers.  We did not like to learn that children were not allowed to sit when they were eating.  They could only speak when spoken to.

We use our notes and our memories to pick out the important facts.

We learn that Pilgrim children had horn books.  These flat boards contained the alphabet.  Children learned to read by studying the Bible.  If a child really loved to read, he or she would have to read whatever materials that the adults read.

James illustrates the emotions that the Pilgrims felt.

We really, really enjoyed learning that Pilgrim boys wore dresses until they were six years old!

I love this initial Thanksgiving/Pilgrims project because it asks the kids to become social scientists.  We utilize different books and handouts in order to learn as much as we can about these people who set forth on a long journey to lead new lives.  A simple flip book becomes a small encyclopedia about these people who lived so long before us.


And we give thanks.  We give thanks for learning and sharing our ideas.  We give thanks for the lives that we have.  We feel glad to have learned about the Pilgrims, but we're fortunate to live during the era that we do.