Sail with the Pilgrims when you make this Mayflower craft

There are a whole slew of great books about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower to use for our history lessons, but I wanted to do something a little different, so we watched, drumroll please:

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving*

I remember seeing this as a little kid and my Mom recording it, as well as the other historical specials (which I think I’m the only one who remembers these), and then watching it over and over and over again. The Pilgrim Thanksgiving is included as a bonus feature and I make the kids watch it every year…….

Ahhhh……  Good times!

(Future Ticia here, now at 10 and 11 years old they ask to watch the Pilgrim Thanksgiving, and the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, also links marked with an * are affiliate links)

And what else do you do when learning about the Pilgrims, but make a Mayflower?

Our Mayflower craft

I saved a whole slew of milk cartons and orange juice cartons, much to Jeff’s chagrin who was wondering why our counter was coverd in drying milk cartons. I cut a hole in them, and then let the kids happily paint their own Mayflowers with brown acrylic paint*.  They spent a happy few minutes painting and chatting away after watching the Charlie Brown Mayflower episode.

Putting our Mayflower craft to work to make aMayflower small world play

And now about a week later, while they’re resting I’ve set them up along with two of the lighthouses to be a fun playscape when they come down from “resting.”  I grabbed some of my blue fabric, and set up an ocean, grabbed a few of their Imaginenext figures* (I grabbed Castle figures, but looks like they’re not a set anymore).

What do you think, will this get me a few minutes of time alone?

Looks like the answer is yes.

Want some more Pilgrim history to go with your Mayflower craft?

While I haven’t written a lot about Thanksgiving, I’ve got a few great bits about what happened to the Pilgrims after they got off the Mayflower.

• The LEGO history of Thanksgiving
• Homeschool Thanksgiving