America celebrates Thanksgiving Day soon! It can be difficult during holidays to keep the kids productively occupied when we’re so busy. I have a site they’ll enjoy! While you’re working in the kitchen, or when you don’t need help (“help”) from the kids, send them to The First Thanksgiving, a site full of free Thanksgiving lesson plans, virtual field trips, and more.
I usually just let my kids roam The First Thanksgiving site, but if you’d prefer, there are Teacher Guides available, so you can tuck these lessons right into your history curriculum! If you teach through unit studies, this site will work perfectly for you – the entire unit study is laid out, with easy access to all modules.
Free Thanksgiving Lesson Plans on the Day, the Mayflower, the Wampanoags, and Plimoth Plantation
Plimoth Plantation (I learned that’s how it was spelled!) worked with Scholastic to create The First Thanksgiving site. With that partnership, there is much to offer us teachers through videos, virtual field trips, historical letters, and more.
The Teacher’s Activity Guides include full Thanksgiving Lesson Plans
The Teacher’s Guides are split into age group: PreK-2, Grades 3-5, or Grades 6-8. Other Thanksgiving teaching resources may be found on this page.
Visit the Mayflower, Plimoth Plantation, a Pilgrim Village, and a Wampanoag Homesite through Virtual Field Trips
There are several virtual field trips to view. I especially like the 30-minute field trip titled Plimoth Plantation, presented live a few years ago. The field trip shows the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag people together on Thanksgiving Day. See this and other virtual field trips here.
Visit The First Thanksgiving to start learning.
updated for 2018. I moved previous years’ comments to this post and forwarded those posts to this one.
oh i am so excited about this! thank you for your work!
Melinda
Thank you so much for this. My kids will love this and I hope it will help us with our gratitude
I am, too. Thanks for writing, MamaBearClubhouse!
You're welcome! I"m looking forward to it, too.
Thanks, Lori. This is a great idea!!!
We attended the virtual field trip last year and used many of their resources. All are well done! Light snow was coming down during last year’s field trip. Very appropriate for middle school and maybe even 9th or 10th graders studying American History.
Thank you for your review, Cindy! That's so helpful.
Thanks! Glad to get back signed up to receive your posts. :)
Thanks for all you do … homeschooling wouldn’t be the same without your website :)
Your note was so well timed, Deborah! Thank you so much for coming by to say that.
Me, too, Kimberly!