In the USA Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November whereas in Canada it is celebrated on the 2nd Monday in October. In 1620 one hundred and two people boarded a ship named Mayflower  in Plymouth.Those were the Pilgrim Fathers. They were Puritans who wanted to go to the New World. Being very religious, they were not satisfied with the way people used to live in their country.

In December 1620 they landed at a place they called New Plymouth where they started building their houses. They were hungry and cold so half of them died. A Wampanoag Indian called Squanto was very friendly and he helped those Pilgrims who survived the harsh winter. He showed them how to grow corn and how to cultivate the crop. In summer 1621 they gathered up a small harvest. The Pilgrims wanted to give God thanks for collecting crops for the first time in their new country. The first Thanksgiving was a feast shared by the Pilgrims and the Indians. They dined together sharing their corn, squash and wild turkey.

The first feast was not repeated until over a decade later.

Thanksgiving was declared a national holiday in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. In Canada it was declared a national holiday by the Canadian Parliament in 1879.

Today Thanksgiving Day is an important holiday both in the USA and Canada. Traditional food served at Thanksgiving is roast turkey (usually stuffed), mashed potatoes or yams, cranberry sauce, corn bread and pumpkin pie.  

Now that you know very much about Thanksgiving Day, let me tell you how we celebrated it at our school.

The junior classes did colouring workshops within which they had to colour Native Americans, Pilgrims Fathers and turkeys according to the given colour or they had to do a bit of calculating before and then colour the fields correctly. For example, 5+2 equals 7 and 7 is colour yellow. So they had to colour the field yellow. They did Maths and English and colouring...and had fun doing it!

The upper classes used  toilet rolls to make turkeys, Native Americans and Pilgrim Fathers. They used water colours, hot glue, glitter, gems, feathers and so on. The results are seen on the photos following the news.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Try to think about gratefulness today. I am grateful for my family. What are you grateful for?