When I was in elementary school I can remember learning
about both Columbus Day and Thanksgiving through mostly songs and books read to
us by the teachers. I think that most teachers skipped over the more historical
facts about both of these holidays and instead stuck to what they knew would
interest their students. For that reason, truthfully I don’t know all that much
about either holiday other than knowing the dates that Columbus landed and the
names of the ships he sailed upon. In school both of these holidays seemed more
like excuses for the teachers to throw parties, rather than as a proper lesson
that we as kids learned and committed to memory. Personally I believe that these
holidays are important because we as a country celebrate them. If we are going
to celebrate them and give the students time off from school, they should know
the reasons why so that they respect those days.
Truthfully for teachers, it shouldn’t be all that difficult
to know what to do in regards to teaching their students about Thanksgiving. A
simple Google search on that matter brought me to Scholastic.com, which
provided both articles about the holiday as well as activities for the children
to do. If I were teaching the students about this holiday in particular I would
design a lesson plan around some of the activities listed there so that I knew
the students were learning something rather than just enjoying the fact that
the holiday gets them out of school. One activity that I found particularly
interesting was something called a “Virtual Trip to Plymouth Plantation”. Now
given, we live close enough that maybe for a field trip this would be suitable
but if we wanted to give children across the country the opportunity to take a
tour of this plantation where some of the first settlers to this country lived.
Most classrooms these days have Smartboards or projectors, so I think this
would be a fantastic resource to use.
In any case I found there to be a wide variety of resources out
there for teachers to use for helping their students to learn about
Thanksgiving in particular. It is my belief that children should walk away from
elementary school knowing all that there is on the holidays that our country
celebrates, and teaching them while they are this young is a surefire way to
make sure it sticks with them.
Resources:
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