Cranberry Thanksgiving centers around a little girl who lives with her grandmother who is famous for her cranberry bread; but Grandma insists on keeping the recipe a secret. Both of them invite a friend over to share Thanksgiving dinner and learn a lesson about character in the process.
We watched a short video on YouTube called How Does it Grow? - Cranberries that also showed how they are processed. Even I learned several things! In that short video it mentioned that Ocean Spray is the lead grower in the USA, so we went to their website to see what we could see. They have another short video about cranberry cooperatives that was worth watching, as well as information on the different types of products that they make from the cranberries.
As always, we had a FoldNLearn to work on. This is a free download from the Five in a Row publisher's blog and a lapbook downloaded from Homeschool Share. Today we reviewed the New England states and drawing on information learned in the cranberry video, talked about the seasons. We noted that fall time is when most cranberries are harvested and eaten.
We obviously HAD to follow that up with tasting some cranberries! Today it was craisins (dried cranberries) and also cranberry walnut bread. We gave the thumbs up to both.
We went on to make cranberry/orange cookies for a Thanksgiving party that we went to with our homeschool co-op.
Yum!
One REALLY MUST talk about the origins of Thanksgiving and this book was a good lead in to it. We listened to a radio drama of The Legend of Squanto (available here on Amazon - affiliate link) and the younger kids continued work on some Native American costumes they began in co-op last week.
Since it isn't obvious I will clue you in! These are Indian vests, of course!
We had a lot of fun at the Thanksgiving party that our homeschool co-op hosted. Lots of crafts opportunities...
And snacks too!
Other things we did: Custom coloring books! If you have a comb binder (I got mine used on Ebay) you can print off anything and make them into custom books! Free downloads about Thanksgiving found HERE!
And we practiced handwriting - at this point tracing the letters.
Our extended family gathered for a big Thanksgiving feast.
After dinner the family did a reading theater drama of the story of the first Thanksgiving.
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| Happy Thanksgiving! |
Movies watched:
How Does it Grow? Cranberries
Cranberry Cooperatives
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (The dvd included The Mayflower Voyagers too!)
Supplementary books read:
Squanto and the first Thanksgiving by Joyce K. Kessel
Three Young Pilgrims by Cheryl Harness
The First Thanksgiving by Jean Craighead George (GREAT illustrations, some may want to watch the text for evolutionary references)
Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen
Thanksgiving Day by Anne Rockwell
Thanksgiving Is.... by Gail Gibbons
Thanksgiving by Lisa M. Herington
and just for fun:
The Squirrels' Thanksgiving by Steven Knoll
Daisy's Crazy Thanksgiving by Margery Cuyler
Mousekin's Thanksgiving by Edna Miller
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