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November Week 3
How the Pilgrims and Native Americans Celebrated Thanksgiving
picture from http://www.kidsdomain.com/holiday/thanks/color/give7.gif
Materials needed:
Look again at http://www.plimoth.org/learn/. Just for fun, you might even want to send some of the recipes home with the children. With the recipes you could include an invitation to the Thanksgiving Sunday worship service.
You’ll need a drum and the set of pilgrim forms/cutouts that you have used for the month. Of the cut outs you will need the Native people, the Pilgrims, the animals, and if possible have some corn and pumpkins.
Lesson:
Read scripture.
Does anyone remember why the person who wrote those words was happy? (wait) The person knew that even though life can be difficult sometimes, God is still with us.
The Pilgrims and the Wampanoag People both had ways of giving thanks to God. And they are ways different from how we celebrate Thanksgiving today..
For the Pilgrims, a day of thanksgiving would be called by the pastor as an extra day of worship. That means that it was on a day other then Sunday. The day would begin with a child going through the village beating a drum that meant it was time for all the people to go to church. Will someone be our drummer? ( child comes forward. Give then child the drum and ask the child to go up and down the aisle one time. Take back the drum and return the child to the seat.) After, everyone gathered in the church, they would sing songs, read scripture, and say prayers. The minister would say some words. Everyone would go home for lunch and after lunch they would be back in church to do more giving thanks to God for whatever prayers they felt had been answered. So, is that what you kids do on Thanksgiving? hummm. Maybe you do what the Wampanoag People did.
The Wampanoag People gave thanks by dancing, eating and sharing. Like the Pilgrims, the leaders might call for a day of giving thanks at any time. But they would have found the quiet way the Pilgrims gave thanks a little strange.
And then there was the harvest festival. This is more like what we call Thanksgiving today. When the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag celebrated the first harvest festival there were three days of feasting, playing games, and enjoying each other’s company. Do any of you have special food for your Thanksgiving? Well, for the Pilgrims Thanksgiving, there was usually no food. But for the Harvest festival there was lots of food like corn, pumpkins, fish, bread, and meat. Do you play any games at your Thanksgiving? That is also more like the Harvest Festival that the Pilgrims and Wampanoag celebrated. And while the Harvest Festival was a celebration of the food they had grown, it was still a time for teveryone to be thankful that they would have enough food to get through the winter
Let’s sing our thankful song.
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