Thanksgiving Crafts and "Good Reads"

For Thanksgiving each year for the past few years we pull out the Nest Family VHS of "William Bradford", watch it, and do some of the activities from the accompanying book. I got both the tape and the study guide for $5 several years ago on consignment at a homeschool book store.

We also have a "Thankful Tree" where each day each child takes a construction-paper leaf cutout (children can draw and cut out their own when old enough) and write or draw something they are thankful for that day. The leaves get taped together on our French doors above where I put a "trunk" that says "I Am Thankful For...." They love watching the tree "grow" each day. On Thanksgiving Day, they take turns reading the "leaves" to the family and friends. This year we didn't have any brown construction or butcher paper for the trunk so my creative 9 yo ran and got an empty gift paper tube to use for the trunk - she and her brother even cut out a hole in the middle for a "squirrel hole" !

Along with the Thanksgiving and Harvest theme each year for the past few years we have read "The Little Red Hen" and had the children do a finger puppet play of the story. Make your own from felt like these or from paper like these.

We also like to make turkeys from apples, pine cones or just tracing our hands/feet onto card stock. We usually make place cards like these or similar just a day or two before Thanksgiving, and sometimes make napkin rings from construction paper with corn kernels or leaf prints. One of my favorite websites for ideas and crafts is THIS one. Last year we did a "mini-lapbook" with a map of the Mayflower's journey, a diagram of the Mayflower, a craft using lentils, construction paper and paint to make a picture of Indian corn, collected and studied about sassafras (it grows wild here), and colored a nice picture of the Pilgrims in prayer for the cover. I got most of the ideas and copies from the internet from sites like these and these.

Our favorite Thanksgiving books and stories are Samuel Eaton's Day and Sarah Morton's Day, The First Thanksgiving (an easy reader that the youngest reader in the family gets to read aloud the first year they learn to read) and excerpts from Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford. We also have a wonderfully written story of Squanto in one of our short-story books. William Bradford's Prayer of Thanksgiving or Abraham Lincoln's Declaration of Thanksgiving are amazing historical documents that can be read aloud on Thanksgiving Day to reinforce the importance of the season. After living overseas years ago and having to work on Thanksgiving Day I am acutely aware of the blessedness and honor of celebrating this holiday. What a wonderful reminder to all of us of our Godly Christian heritage in this country that is being all but forgotten lately.

May you and your family have a very wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving season!