Week 9: Pilgrims

We took last week off of school as a chance to regroup. Not much regrouping was done and I was kind of a homeschooling failure this week. I decided that working up to Thanksgiving, we're going to do three units: Pilgrims, Indians, and Turkeys. This week was Pilgrims. I didn't do nearly enough prep work, so this is what we ended up with on the fly:

Literature
I usually save literature until the end of the week, but Lucy doesn't really know the story of the first Thanksgiving, so we started out with this book:

The First Thanksgiving by Linda Hayward

Math
I found this cute printable and decided it was time to start working on ten frames with Lucy. We've never tried them before, but we jumped right in and she did great! I've been trying to think of a good way to reinforce the teen numbers and this fit the bill. There were two sets of cards: the marked ten frames and a number. She counted the dots in the ten frame and matched it with the number.

We also did a pilgrim puzzle from this free download to review the skip counting we learned two weeks ago. And finally, we made our own Mayflowers out of tin foil and put them in the bath tub ocean. I gave Lucy a jar full of pennies and told her to pretend the pennies were Pilgrims. We learned that there were 102 Pilgrims on the Mayflower, so I told her to see if she could fit 102 pennies in her boat. Her first boat capsized within seconds, so I showed her how the one I made with higher walls kept the water out better. So she tried again, and started counting pennies as she threw them in the boat. She made it to 41 before the boat went under.

I could not get a good picture of this whole process. Haha.

Alphabet Activities
I severely lacked in creativity and printed off a few worksheets from this printable pack.

I also pulled a couple of pages out of a workbook I had laying around, not really sure if Lucy would be interested/ready to do it, but she did really well!

Crafts
And here's my super creative craft of the week:

A strangely orange Pilgrim! Haha. I combined yellow, red, and white to try and get that lovely flesh-color, but apparently failed. Inspired by this.

Field Trip
The one fun thing we did was a spontaneous field trip to Presley's house. My friend Kelly is homeschooling her daughter Presley, who is Lucy's age, so we decided to get together and re-enact the story of the first Thanksgiving. It was hilarious and adorable. Kelly has the pictures on her phone, though, so you're just going to have to take my word for it.

First, we made a pilgrim hat and bonnet for the girls to wear (which stayed on their heads for about four seconds). Then we talked about why they wanted to leave England and how crowded and awful the long boat ride was. To illustrate how crowded it was we put Presley, Lucy, and both of the little sisters in one laundry basket. Haha. Then we talked about the gross food the Pilgrims had to eat: hardtack, smoked meat, and moldy cheese. We gave the girls crackers, salami and [non-moldy] cheese to eat, and emphasized how sick they would get of eating the same things for 66 days! We also discussed how boring it must have been on the ship with no toys, and how the Pilgrim kids used to sing songs to pass the time. I asked the girls if they wanted to sing a song and they decided on "Let it Go." Lol. So the girls and both us moms belted out "Let it Go." Finally, our ship made it to land and we talked about how the Pilgrims had to work so hard building their houses, and only took breaks on Sundays to worship God. We pretended to build our houses, then stopped to sing Jesus loves me, then went right back to building.

We discussed the many hardships the Pilgrims faced: sickness, lack of shelter, lack of food, and fear of the Indians. But then we talked about Samoset and Squanto and how they proved that the Indians weren't scary at all, but rather wanted to be their friends! At this point, we made Indian vests out of paper bags and headdresses out of construction paper.

My stellar photography skills back in action.

Finally, we talked about how the Indians saved the Pilgrims' lives by helping them, and how the Pilgrims wanted to thank them - and God, so they had a big feast. At which point we ate macaroni and cheese and called our lesson complete! Thanks Kelly for inviting us over!

P.S. Our entire lesson was based around this book:

If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620

It got rave reviews on Pinterest, so I ordered it from the library. I was surprised to see how incredibly long it was. I didn't actually read it to Lucy. I just read it myself to refresh my memory and have a jumping off point.