Sunday, November 30, 2008

A Happy Homeschool Thanksgiving

This week has, of course, been a crazy one. I am sure it is the same with every family at this time of the year.

A few days before Thanksgiving, we celebrated this festive holiday with all of our friends in our homeschool group (there were probably 60 of us all together!). We had so much fun!

It was hosted by one of the many members in the group who run a working farm. They have ducks, chickens, roosters, turkeys, baby chicks, horses, ponies, cows, etc.

Poor R... she is such a girly girl. She overdressed herself for being on a farm.

But she tried to make the best of it and (after applying some facepaint) was soon running with the others. :o)

And, yes, that is my daughter rubbing her tummy and saying, "YUM! Turkeys." The poor turkeys you see in the background are going to be Thanksgiving Dinner this year.

Sandy, who was the hostess, dressed herself and her 7 children as either pilgrims or indians, and gave all of us a wonderful history lesson.
Sandy is a 9th generation direct ancestor of William Bradford, who was one of the original pilgrims. She also has his personal journals that he wrote in from his journey overseas to the "New World", and of his trials after his arrival. It was fascinating.


One of the entries in his journal was that in the beginning, the settlers did not have much food at all, and many of them were starving to death. That first year after they arrived, the rations of food had dwindled down to merely 5 kernels of corn per person, per day!

So, Sandy had prepared some corn and gave each of the children 5 solitary kernels of corn... and then told them, "Happy Thanksgiving! Didn't you like this wonderful feast?" Ha ha. Some of the littler ones got a little worried that they were not getting anything else to eat! :o)

Another interesting entry in the journals was that there were no utensils for the settlers to use, so they had to use sea shells as spoons. Sandy encouraged those who wanted to, to try to eat their meals with a shell instead of the utensils that we take for granted.

R decided to give it a try... which, if you know R, you know she is very prissy. It was soooo out of character for her, but she did it! The look on her face is priceless, but she did it! I was so proud of her!

The kids ended the eventful day by going on horseback rides!

Well, all except little H. She didn't mind so much. She had too much fun playing in the giant sand pit they had in the backyard.

At the end of the day, she was completely filthy from head to toe, and was asleep in the car shortly after this picture was taken. (as you can see from the picture, she is already staring off into space and I couldn't get her attention for a picture, so this is what we ended up with) :o)

2 comments:

Misty Burns said...

looks like a lot of fun!! too cute pic of H. she is gonna be your outgoing child...so get ready!!:)

The growing Adkinson family said...

you guys have some fun homeschool trips, I wanna go next time :) I love the picture of R rubbuing her tummy by the turkeys too funny.