I hope everyone is ready for Thanksgiving! We are very excited for our Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday, November 20th. Please do not pack a lunch for your child. We have been preparing all week learning about the first Thanksgiving.

We created a chart to brainstorm what we know and what we would like to learn about the Pilgrims. The children realized they had lots of information about the Pilgrims. They knew that the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower for religious freedom. The the friendly Native Americans helped them to grow crops. To celebrate a successful harvest the Pilgrims and Indians had a feast to celebrate their friendship. The students wanted to know what it was like traveling on the Mayflower and how long it took. I found a letter from a Pilgrim child who described what it was like. We learned about the games the children played, how cramped everyone was, and that it took three months before the Pilgrims arrived at their destination in the new world. We then read The First Thanksgiving by Jackson Garnet where we learned about the trouble the Pilgrims ran into when they arrived at Plymouth. Many pilgrims died during their first winter. When spring arrived the Indians offered to teach the Pilgrims how to build houses, hunt, and grow food. We made our own comparison chart of Thanksgiving in 1620 with our own Thanksgiving. We learned about what the Pilgrims houses looked like and we were able to create our own.

In math workshop we finished our unit about geometry. Currently students are working on solving addition problems using a number line. We played different games to learn how to “count on” and find the missing numbers to complete an addition problem.

In writers workshop we have been learning strategies to form words. We have counted on our fingers to create the beginning, middle, and end to our stories. We learned that there are words that we can spell with a snap of our fingers and words that we can find on the word wall. Lastly, we worked on stretching out words we don’t know to listen for the sounds we hear in order to spell the word.

Looking ahead:
o Tuesday November 20 Thanksgiving feast at 12:30
o November 21-24 no school Thanksgiving Break
o No Homework next week

Happy Thanksgiving!