Semi-genocidal Evangelicals and Cranberry Sauce

[queerpaganquill]

I need advice:

I'm planning my school's Thanksgiving curriculum. As much as I'd like to do a traditional 'Pilgrims and Indians' sort of celebration, I feel like I shouldn't misrepresent history.

What do you think is the best way to tackle the Thanksgiving-thing with four and five year-olds?

Comments

[garan_du]

Divide the class into halves, with one half being designated as Pilgrims, and the other half being designated as Natives. Make the Pilgrim half sit off to the side. They are not allowed to talk or fidget all day long. The only book they are allowed to read is the Bible. It may NOT have any pictures in it to distract them. Any violations of the silence and stillness rules must be brutally punished. They are allowed to eat plain porridge and stale bread.

The Native half of the class is given toys to play with. They are encouraged to have lots of fun all day long in plain sight of the Pilgrims. They are allowed to eat as many healthy and tasty snacks as they like.

At the end of the day, give the Pilgrim half of the class baseball bats and allow them to beat up the Native half of the class and steal/break all of their toys, consume all of their food, shove them into a little corner of the room, and tell them to sit down and shut up.

Welcome to Thanksgiving, kids.

[queerpaganquill]

Ah. Good times.

Ideas

[slowyaroll]

I have ideas, but I don't know of many that would be 4-5y.o appropriate.

Maybe it's the culinary student in me, but Thanksgiving provides a great opportunity to talk about foods and food groups

you could also talk about the Mayflower and ship and the float vs. sink thing.

or about Plymouth Rock and different types of rocks.

I've seen what you've done with things as simple as a giant rubber balloon. I have confidence you can come up with something great. If nothing else, I will talk to my mom and try to see what she's doing in her preschool class.

[vestribear]

Hey quill on a slightly different subject. I can get you a stack of books with PreK and K educational activities. Let me know an I can start setting some aside for you, one of the perks of working for an education company, ha! At least I have confidence that the editors didn't make errors in these grade levels.

[saraide]

I'd go with the simple concept of being thankful for what we have. It's been a very long time since Thanksgiving was really about that mostly fictitious dinner between the Pilgrims and Indians, plus that's a lot for kids to wrap their heads around- we spend a gluttonous day eating everything in sight to remember that at one point, it looked like the conquerors and the soon-to-be-conquered people would get along? Meh. It's like trying to explain why we have the Easter bunny.

I like to think of Thanksgiving Day as a time to be thankful for all that we have, most especially the people we'll share that meal with. That's a concept kids can understand, and is something that isn't taught as well as it should be.

[gillshallows]

When dealing with 4&5yo's on the subject of (just about) any holiday I believe the best way to deal with it is...
lie to them.
At this age the mythology is more important than history, the Story is more important than the Truth.
Would you tell the kids that Santa Claus isn't real?

[garan_du]

So what you're saying is that thay're kinda like, um, Gardnerians?

[drakematrix]

Personally I have a very strict policy against lying to children. This includes Santa Clause.

If we spend our time lying to our children, why should they believe us later on as teenagers? How can we possibly expect them to trust us when we have spent their entire lives proving that adults are untrustworthy.

[sevi]

Make it very high level. Make food for them - Indian Pudding or a squash- and make the traditional Turkey pine cone decorations. Take paper grocery bags and have them decorate them with either feathers for indians or black and white tempo paint for pilgrims. Make Indian head dresses or Piligrim hats.

Talk about sharing and caring for each others. They will learn soon enough the real truth - right now childhood is magical. Let them live in that magic a wee bit longer.