Orr Homeschool Adventures: Pilgrims

Today we continued with Thanksgiving adventures. The library storyhour theme was all about Thanksgiving too. They read several Thanksgiving books and then made Indians. Evan was so excited! In the middle of one of the stories, he said, "Evan has Indians too! I have Indian puppets at my house!" When making his Indian craft, he kept calling it Squanto!

When we got home from storyhour, we read through "The First Thanksgiving" book that we had made yesterday. Evan followed along with his mini book. He knew that we were going to talk about Pilgrims today. As soon as we were done reading, he was begging to make Pilgrim puppets.

Evan piecing together the Pilgrim puppets.

Of course, then it was show time! At first he just wanted his 2 Pilgrims, but then he said, "They need their friends. Where is Squanto?" So then he put on puppet shows with the whole gang. Alan wanted to play too!

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrim.

Both boys putting on a show with the Indians and Pilgrims.

We had checked out several books from the library about the First Thanksgiving. We read through all of those and talked about what it may have been like living back then. We made lots contrasts from what was shown in the pictures and what it is like today - things like the clothes, the houses, the way they cooked, etc. Then we did a 'Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful!" worksheet (courtesy of Nanny!). It had a neat Pilgrim poem on it with little pictures for Evan to glue on. The poem went like this:

Pilgrim, Pilgrim by: M. Hubbard
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see? I see the king refusing my plea.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see the Mayflower ready for sea.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see a new land to set me free.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see a hard winter, tough as can be.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see a green bud on a spring tree.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see an Indian helping me.
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see corn growing 1, 2, 3!
Pilgrim, Pilgrim, what do you see?  I see praise, for thankful are we!

Bible Words Say to be Thankful! Ephesians 5:20

Nanny had given us another worksheet about how the Indians worked very hard to raise their food. This was perfect because we had just noticed in the library books how the Indians and Pilgrims gathered, prepared, and cooked their food much different than we do today. We talked about how their tools were not like the tools we use today. They used tools made of stone and wood. They would use a heavy round rock to crush nuts and corn into meal. Their bowls were made from hewn rock and they baked on big flat rocks in an open fire pit. The Indians raised corn that was multicolored. It was very hardy and made delicious cornbread. God also provided them with deer, elk and turkeys. Evan glued pieces of corn all over the worksheet.

Gluing corn onto the worksheet.

While we were outside playing, I found a couple of rocks that Evan could use to try to make corn meal like the Indians and Pilgrims. He really enjoyed this. We talked about how much time it would have taken them to prepare their food. We sure have it easy today. I pulled out some Jiffy corn meal mix and he dumped it into a bowl. Then he mixed in an egg and some milk to make some corn bread. While the corn bread was baking, I made Evan a pilgrim hat. He loved it! He said that he liked Pilgrims better than Indians! We then enjoyed some warm corn bread together.