Educational Thanksgiving Activities

Incorporating some educational Thanksgiving activities will make learning much more fun and festive, for both adults and children! Here are some ideas that can make the week leading up to Thanksgiving much more exciting, but still educational!

1. A great way to get students excited about Thanksgiving for reasons other than the great food is by teaching them how it all began! It is likely that they do not know much besides the fact that the pilgrims and the colonists ate together. By showing them this video on the history of Thanksgiving, you can help expand their knowledge and they will love telling the story to everyone at the dinner table! Once they watch the video, have them take this fun quiz to test their new knowledge!
2. Another educational experience which can be done around the holidays is to volunteer at a food bank or soup kitchen. Although this is a different type of education, it is equally as valuable as something one can be tested on. Volunteering is something everyone should experience, and the holidays are a great time to get started as a lot of extra help is usually needed. Some ways to incorporate volunteering into the classroom can be found here.
3. Scholastic is offering a series of letters written by a Pilgrim girl and a Wampanoag boy living during the time of the first Thanksgiving. These letters can be used for further teaching the history of the first Thanksgiving, although they are not real accounts.
4. If you are in or around the Boston area, another great way to teach children about history from this time period is to take a field trip to Plimoth Plantation. This village is a time machine back to the time of the Pilgrims, and students will be able to interact with actors dressed in costumes, who speak as the Pilgrims and Wampanoags would have.

Amanda De Moraes

Boston Tutoring Services