Happy Thanksgiving & The Pilgrim Children

Today was a very special day as we celebrated the American holiday of ‘Thanksgiving’. We wish you all a very happy thanksgiving holiday! A big ‘Thank You’ to Christina and Karen for all their hard work preparing food and art materials for the children today. It was wonderful and we all really appreciate it. When we first arrived this morning we saw that the carpet in the play area was rolled back and underneath was our giant transport artwork. On the roads we painted last week there were cars, buses and taxis as well as the traffic lights we made last week. We decided it would be fun to use the artwork as a play area today and drove the vehicles along the roads. On the table there were 2 yellow circles which we wanted to use for our helicopter landing pads, but first we needed to make a big red ‘H’ on each of them. Eito and Olivia kindly helped put the letters on them and then we glue them to some Styrofoam bases to go on the play artwork. Also on the table were lots of cardboard boxes which we are making into buildings for our artwork. We had some grey paint left over from painting the roads and so we used rollers to paint the boxes grey. It was a little difficult not to get paint on our hands but we soon managed it. When the paint has dried we are going to stick on some windows and doors to make them look more real. In the ‘home’ corner Eito, Kosei, Nile, Toku and Riko enjoyed playing with the food and kitchen materials. It was soon time to pack away and have snack together and we all helped unroll the carpet to cover our artwork. It was then time for Olivia’s ‘Show and Tell’. Olivia brought along a beautiful castle she had decorated herself with stickers and it even had her name ‘Princess Olivia’ on the front. Along with the castle Olivia brought a green mermaid and her blue shiny horse to show her friends. It was a great show and tell Olivia, thank you! When we got back from the park Olivia’s mother Christina and Adam’s mother Karen were waiting for us to tell us all about ‘Thanksgiving’. Christina started off with a great book which showed us all about how the pilgrims left from England on a ship called the Mayflower and travelled for about 2 months. When they found America they landed in a place later named New England. It was very cold and they didn’t have much food left. They tried planting crops and hunting for animals but they weren’t very successful the first winter. Then they met a man called ‘Squanto’ who had lived in England previously. He could speak English and helped them hunt and grow food that would survive in America. They built thatched houses and started to celebrate ‘Thanksgiving’ every year. There was lots of food to eat including turkey, cranberries, pumpkin and corn. Karen then read a book titled ‘Happy Thanksgiving Biscuit’ all about a little girl and her dog biscuit and how they prepared their house to celebrate by decorating, making pumpkin pie and setting the table. We then moved to the table to make cranberry sauce together. We used cranberries, sugar, water, cinnamon and allspice. On the second table we all made hats which looked just like pilgrim hats. All the girls made bonnets from white paper and the boys made black hats with brown stripes and a gold buckle on the front. The cranberries were soon ready and we all tried some along with some great mini pumpkin pies with cream on the top. It all tasted delicious, thank you so much Christina and Karen and a very happy Thanksgiving. Have a great afternoon. All our love, Darren, Ayaka & Goh San