Thanksgiving

For the past two weeks we have been focusing on Thanksgiving. 

We learned about the Teepees that the Native Americans lived in and that the Native Americans used many colors and patters to decorate their beautiful homes. To have the children have a full experience of teepees we constructed our own life size teepee. The children helped by decorating sheets of butcher block paper with different colors and patterns. The children all got a chance to play in the teepee and pretend that they were Native Americans and pilgrims. 

We also discussed the similarities and differences of Native Americans and Pilgrims. We created this Venn diagram below. 

We also made festive Thanksgiving mats. We decorated them by making a patterned border and then made handprint turkeys. We also continued to discuss what it means to be thankful. The children shared two things that they are thankful for and we dictated their words onto their placemats. 

Furthermore, we also decided it would be fun to investigate a pumpkin. They shared that they thought the outside of the pumpkin was hard and bumpy. After feeling the textures and looking at the skin the children made prediction of what they thought it looked like inside. After cutting it open we discovered that the pumpkin felt smooth and squishy, with many seeds inside. 

We decided that we should take advantage of all of the pumpkin seeds and bake some to see what they would taste like. There were mixed reviews. We also decided to leave a few seeds inside the pumpkin and we added soil and water inside. We are conducting an experiment to see it anything will grow. Only time will tell. 

We ended our Thanksgiving unit with a lovely feast. We wore our Native American headdresses that we decorated by making patterns. 

Our song of the week:

Turkey Song

(Tune of "Yankee Doodle")

The turkey is a funny bird 

His head goes wobble wobble

All he says is just one word

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble