Thanksgiving Printables

A lot of our local schools are taking all next week off. I'm not sure that the kids are really that distracted by Thanksgiving, but they can certainly get distracted by the Friday before a long break, and by turkey and dressing in the cafeteria.

What's more, plenty of teachers are by now getting distracted by the thought that they forgot to clean the coat closet and have twenty people coming for turkey and dressing at their homes.

Therefore, you may be just in the mood for some last-minute printables.

• The Toymaker's Thanksgiving goodies are wonderful. Make cards to take home ot parents (one has a place for a photo), nut cups for the celebratory table, napkin rings, leaves with thankful messages, or models of the Mayflower. And that's not all -- check them out.
• FamilyFun has a collection of links to PDF files to download. Coloring pages, games, planners, and more.
• Parents.com also has a collection. My favorite at this site is the placemat with outlines to show where everything goes.
• How about a skipcounting "maze" to practice counting by 2s in Thanksgiving style?
• Doug Cushman's napkin rings print in full color for cutting and taping practice.
• Bethany Roberts has a scrambled words worksheet.
• Ben and Jerry have goofy place cards just right for kids who are learning to write their names.
• Here's a whole crowd of Thanksgiving math worksheets.
• A realistic turkey coloring page.
• A rather elegant turkey coloring page with lots of scope for geometry lessons or fancy colorwork.
• A cut and paste turkey hat, for those who feel that simple elegance is seriously overrated.
• Lilliput Station offers a free Thanksgiving activity book -- scroll down the page.
• A PDF file from Hold That Thought includes a religious message, but it's easily removed before copying if it's not appropriate for your classroom.

John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, and Miles Standish

The story of John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, and Miles Standish is one of the favorite Thanksgiving stories, right up there with Squanto and the fish. It is found most completely in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," a long long poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which few people read nowadays. (So here is a summary of it in case you don't.)

In the story, Miles Standish, captain of the Mayflower, has taken a fancy to one of the young passengers, Priscilla Mullins. He asks his young lodger, John Alden, to go to Priscilla and court her for him, since he is a man of action and not of words. When John presents Standish's proposal, Priscilla says, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" The two end up marrying.

Let me offer you some links to go with this story:

• Here is the story retold for children, with lots of historical detail, from A First Book in American History by Edward Eggleston. There are a couple of writing prompts included.
• Here is a play script for the story. Use it as a starting point for writing  a play or Reader's Theater script, or read it for a quick puppet play.
• Read about the Alden's home and family.
• Here is a PDF file of the Longfellow poem which you could print out for your class.
• Find out general background about the Pilgrims. This site is a good reference for teachers, and also a good technology connection for upper elementary and above. We especially like the collection of primary sources, including letters.

English

• Read an interview with John Alden -- or rather with the person who recreates Alden's character at the Plimoth Plantation. For a quick, seasonal assignment for fourth grade and up, ask students to read the interview and rewrite it as an example of descriptive, narrative, or other type of writing that you have been studying.
• Here, for high school students, is the story as presented by Donald Ogden Stewart in A Parody Outline of History. This piece tells the story in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, providing a nice seasonal opportunity to look at Fitzgerald's style. Assuming that your students have read The Great Gatsby, this would be a good starting point for a lesson on parody.
• Compare this story with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Here is a thorough lesson plan for Rostand's play.
• There can be few better choices than this story for rewriting from different points of view.

Critical thinking

• The factual background to this story is very limited. In fact, the only real source of the story is the poem by Alden descendant Longfellow, who knew it as a family story. Discuss the importance of oral history and the drawbacks to relying on it. Identify the provable facts of the story (essentially, that all three characters existed and that John and Priscilla married) and decide how to evaluate the plausibility of the rest of the story.
• The entire question of the provability of history is examined at this site, which looks at widespread misinformation about Standish and in particular about that other beloved character of Thanksgiving stories, Squanto. Examine the sources given to decide whether the author's claims are accurate.
• Following one or both of these discussions, consider the question: should a story be told if it isn't true? At what point does a good historical tale become a legend? Is there a point along that continuum at which we should stop treating it as history?

Character

• This story contains a wonderful ethical dilemma. John, who already loves Priscilla, is asked by a friend to court her on the friend's behalf. As a good friend, should he have foreseen the outcome and refused? Or should he have gone ahead and done his best, as he did in the story? Captain Standish didn't know of his friend's love for Priscilla; should John have told him? Had he known, would Standish have foreseen the outcome? Would he have retracted his request out of kindness? And what about Priscilla? Should she have put John in the difficult position of having to betray his friend? Should she have kept quiet, even though her own happiness -- and that of the men as well -- was at stake? This would be a great topic for a free-ranging discussion followed by a more structured debate, and that ought to get you through this truncated week.
• For a briefer activity, have students list all the character traits they see in the three main characters of the story.
• The poem shows some very old-fashioned attitudes (as we would expect), describing Native Americans as "heathens" and "savages" and showing similar obsolete viewpoints about women and other topics. Practice skimming and scanning by having students highlight examples of attitudes we would now find offensive, and discuss whether such literature should still be read or not. Is it worse to subject ourselves to offensive language, or to lose old works that are still important parts of our heritage?

Currently The Perfect Thanksgiving By Eileen Spinelli see related

The Perfect Thanksgiving Lesson Plans

One of my favorite Thanksgiving books is Eileen Spinelli's The Perfect Thanksgiving. JoAnn Adinolfi illustrated it with bright colors and primitive drawings with mixed media collage. It is the story of two different Thanksgiving celebrations: the perfect holiday of Abigail Archer, and the imperfect one of the narrator.

"Abigail Archer's father serves white meat all around.
Everyone takes dainty bites, and no one makes a sound."

In contrast,

"My grandpa chews the gizzards, my brother chomps the wings,
My sister slurps. My uncle burps. And Aunt Clarissa sings."

The differences are detailed throughout the book, and it finishes up with,

"But we're alike in one way, the nicest way by far--
alike in just how loving our different families are."

The book, told in rhyme, is a fun read-aloud and a great way to kick of discussions oabout modern celebrations of Thanksgiving.

English

• I like this book for introducing the concept of compare/contrast essays. There's an introduction, focusing on the idea of perfection in families. There's a good series of comparisons, using lively language and details. Then there's a conclusion wrapping it up and returning to the idea of perfection in families.
• It's equally good for descriptive writing. The lace tablecloths, people playing chess, and pristine bottles of shampoo in the guest rooms contrast perfectly with the guests sleeping in the kitchen, children jumping on the furniture, and snoring. Have a student scribe list all the lively verbs, specific nouns, and telling adjectives in the book. Note how the swirls of whipped cream on homemade pies bring to mind a completely different image from the Jell-O mold quivering on the floor.
• I also like the way the comparisons stand on their own, without requiring "in comparison," "unlike the first family," and other weakening transitions. It's good to teach our students transitions, but sometimes they become crutches.

Economics

• Most of the differences between the two families can't be chalked up to income levels. Taking a walk and playing chess cost no more than napping, and less than watching TV. But older students may enjoy debating whether there is a socioeconomic class difference between the two families.
• Where do the images of the "perfect Thanksgiving" come from? Have students find pictures in magazines. Is it a consumer-driven expectation? Does the image of the perfect holiday encourage consumers to spend more than they otherwise would, in an effort to create that perfection?

Critical Thinking

• You'll certainly want to use your Venn diagrams to compare the two families.
• The author concludes that loving families are the most important thing about Thanksgiving, and that both the family that burps and hollers and the family that shares toys are equally loving. Find evidence in the book -- int he words or the illustrations -- to support that claim.
   

Immigration Lesson Plans

Immigration is a topic I like to bring into lesson plans around Thanksgiving. After all, that Pilgrim Thanksgiving was a celebration by immigrants who had survived their first year in their new home. Our stories of that occasion focus on their reasons for coming to America, their efforts to settle in and figure out how to live here in a new place, and the way they related to the people who were already here.

Here are a couple of lessons that look at the question of where the people who live here now came from. It's generally agreed that Native Americans came from Asia originally, so our nation really is a nation of immigrants. Celebrate the cultural richness of your classroom with fun math and technology practice before the long break!

Genealogy-based plan

Have students chart their own family trees as well as they can, identifying where all the people on the tree came from. Then gather all the family trees and create a class bulletin board, showing all the students, with when and where their ancestors came from other countries to the United States.

• Try an online family tree kids can complete and print out. Good practice with navigation and keyboard skills.
• a PDF file with a semi-circular fan chart designed for kids, from Misbach.
• Let older students get some tech practice by extending their research at Rootsweb.
• Some families don't have enough information to know where their families came from originally. In such a case, recognize that it isn't possible to know which country the families began in, and accept their oral tradition, or use search engines to make a guess about the origin of their surname.
• Some families will have lots of immigrant ancestors from different places. Encourage students to find creative ways to show all the elements of their heritage on their branch of the class tree.

• Use a bulletin board tree to make your "Where We Came From" display.

Demographics-based plan

Instead of focusing on the ethnic heritage of your particular classroom, look at your community, state, or nation. Determine where people in your community came from, and make a graphic representation of that data. Compare different levels: your country, state, county, or city, for example. If you've done the genealogy-based lesson, you can also compare with your classroom and see how typical you are.

• Census data for the U.S. from 1790 to 1990 gives students opportunities to use Excel and to work with lots of charts and numbers.
• ERsys.com uses maps and simpler charts, and you can get down to your particular city.

Project Euler