I wanted to find several children’s books that did a good job of telling the First Thanksgiving story. The Story of Thanksgiving is my favorite. It is perfect for preschoolers. It tells about the pilgrims leaving their homes and sailing on the Mayflower to a new land. It tells about their harsh winter upon arrive in Plymouth and how the Indians helped them learn how to grow and harvest crops. And then it tells how the Indians and Pilgrims had the first thanksgiving feast together. I bought this book full-price and it was worth it.

On our first day of “Thanksgiving Then” week, we read the book above so that Little Bug could understand the story of the first Thanksgiving. Then, we started making pilgrim hats, Indian attire and the Mayflower so that eventually we can reenact the first Thanksgiving story out together!

Our princess castle/Alphabet Tree became the Mayflower!

Then we started to make some of our Indian Attire! Little Bug colored the headdress with markers and then we stapled some feathers on.

Do you see the crock pot in the background? Yeah. This was the day after the crock pot meal fiasco.

Little Bug colored Sweet Pea’s headdress too.

Little Bug painted a paper grocery bag to complete her Native American outfit.

Little Bug did some Thanksgiving patterns.

We made the Mayflower out of a paper towel roll, a straw, a small white piece of paper and a stapler.

It was Little Bug’s idea to write “Mayflower”. We sounded out the word and I wrote it for her.

Little Bug made an Indian Boy and Indian Girl. This was a good activity for reviewing shapes. We also found the differences & similarities in the shapes used for the girl vs the boy.

When Little Bug was finished with the Indian Boy, she called for Sweet Pea to “Come look!”. I was able to grab the camera fast enough and capture this sweet moment between the sisters.

We did some Thanksgiving Counting. Little Bug counted the objects on the paper and then put the correct number in the box.

Then she put the cards in order from 1-10.

We worked on a Thanksgiving Graph.

This is another First Thanksgiving book that a Kindergarten teacher (Thanks, Katie!) recommended to me. It is called The Very First Thanksgiving Day. I also really love this one. It is more poem-like and I really enjoyed the way it was written.

This book, The First Thanksgiving, is way above preschool level, but Little Bug still enjoyed it very much. It has many more details about the first Thanksgiving than the other two books.

We did some Thanksgiving simple addition.

And we made a Pilgrim Word Book using these cards.

Near the end of Thanksgiving Then week, we noticed our tree and our neighbor’s tree is starting to change colors for Fall!!

- Elaine