Outdoor Adventures: Pilgrims and Indians by Erin Uda

This week we’re going back in time to experience life as a Pilgrim or an Indian. Create a teepee in your yard using an online pattern, or a sheet and some sticks/PVC pipes. Let the kids help you tie, sew, and decorate. If you’re not crafty, feel free to use a tent and some imagination.

(Click HERE for image source and the pattern to make this Teepee)

If the teepee is a bit too involved for you, try making a fort using blankets, chairs, and books or tarps and rope. You can pretend to be the Pilgrims instead of the Indians.

Or do both – first be Indians, then be Pilgrims.

Spend a few hours living outside and learning what they went through that first winter. You could make it an immersive experience, actually having them carry buckets of water around and trying to re-create their simple, impoverished lives; or you could keep it fun and light by simply reading books and telling stories together in the teepee or fort once it’s finished, and then leaving it up for them to play in for a few days.

When it gets closer to Thanksgiving, plan a children’s feast. Bring the meal outside and talk about the first thanksgiving, the pilgrims, the Indians, and how they worked together and helped each other.

And remember to dress the part! Make a feather headdress and a paper grocery sack vest or a Pilgrim hat/bonnet and buckles for your shoes.

Recommended Reading:

• Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation, Diane Stanley
• Alligator arrived with apples: a potluck alphabet feast, Crescent Dragonwagon
• Friendship’s First Thanksgiving, William Accorsi
• I know an old lady who swallowed a pie, Alison Jackson
• Thanksgiving Day, Anne F. Rockwell