November School-Time: Thankfulness Month... or Pilgrim Month... or Turkey Month

For November's school time theme, we had quite a difficult time choosing between thankfulness month, pilgrim month or turkey month.

Actually, to me, it's a no-brainer... TURKEY MONTH! I always gravitate toward the craft-friendly and food-related themes!

But McPreachy said he didn't like Turkey Month because we need to expose Bennett to more history... hence Pilgrim Month was born.

But then I thought it would be great to center the month around the idea of thankfulness in preparation for Thanksgiving. So I thought maybe Thankfulness Month.

After all... we're making this wonderful Thankfulness Tree where we add leaves every day saying what we're thankful for.


Bennett has expressed thankfulness for some pretty cute/quirky/precious things, including blueberries, "happy things," and my personal favorite... the unsolicited, "I'm thankful for you, Mama!"

But you can't make thankfulness sugar cookies or cut thankfulness out of construction paper or cover thankfulness in glitter glue... so I decided it's really too obscure to be our school-time theme.

And yet... I really want to focus on the importance of thankfulness this month! It is much more important than turkeys or even pilgrims!

For those of you scoffers who say I am spending too much time thinking about something that doesn't really matter, I say "Oh P'shaw!" (This is a phrase my mom used to say all the time. It is also translated: "That's crazy talk! What do you mean my holiday school time theme doesn't matter?!") Because really, how can life possibly go on if we don't have one, all-inclusive, holiday-centered theme for school time? It is of utmost importance.

So I am therefore naming November:

"Thankful Pilgrims and Turkeys Month!"

See.. it covers all my bases in one fell swoop!

Besides our thankfulness tree, a few items on this month's academic and fun-o-demic agenda are:

• Make Oreo turkeys


• Watch "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and "The Mayflower Voyage" (on the same DVD)


• "Churn" our own butter, Pilgrim style, yo!

To do this, place heavy whipping cream and salt in a clean Tupperware or mason
jar and shake, shake, shake it until you've got butter!

• Hand print Turkeys

• Check out some special Thanksgiving books from the library.

Here are a few that we've gotten already and love!

*Thanksgiving at the Tappletons' by Eileen Spinelli

We love this book about a Thanksgiving dinner gone horribly wrong. We especially love the wonderful prayer at the end, which we are memorizing for Thanksgiving. It goes:

Turkeys come, and turkeys go

And trimmings can be lost we know.

But we're together, that what matters,

Not what's served upon the platters.

*One Little, Two Little, Three Little Pilgrims by B.G. Hennessy


A very cute book about the first Thanksgiving.. surprisingly
educational!

*Thanksgiving is For Giving Thanks by Margaret
Sutherland

So there you have it... "Thankful Pilgrims and Turkeys Month."
Doesn't it just warm the cockles of your heart?

Stay tuned for more thematic delights!