The First Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful unit in November that focused on the first Thanksgiving.  First we learned why the Pilgrims journeyed to America.  We learned a lot of facts about the Mayflower.  We created our own Mayflower ships and wrote one of the facts about the ship on the sails.

You can see our ships sailing for America!  We used the Scholastic site to help us learn about the Mayflower.
Then we learned about the hardships the Pilgrims experienced on the Mayflower.  We wrote an opinion piece in the form of the a postcard.   We stated whether or not we enjoyed the voyage on the Mayflower.

Then we learned about the daily life of the Pilgrim and Wampanoag people.  We read books and again used the Scholastic site.  We compared and contrasted their life and culture.  Then we made a Pilgrim home.

We also made a "wetu", a Wampanoag home.

We finished our unit by writing another opinion piece.  We wrote about whether or not we would like to live in the time of the Pilgrims.  We made sure to support our opinion with several good reasons.  The learning experience was a lot of fun!