Supplies Needed (for each place setting):
Pinecone
Construction Paper (red, yellow, orange, brown)
Pom (brown)
Googly eyes
Glue
Marker
Pipe Cleaner (orange) –optional
You will need help from an adult for this first step: place the pinecone(s) on a cookie sheet and bake at 200 degrees F for about 40 minutes to kill and bugs or germs that might be living in there. Let the pinecone cool before you touch it.
First, cut out all your pieces. Cut one feather shape for each letter of the name you want to put on the turkey. For example, if I were making a place card for myself I would cut out seven feathers because Jessica has seven letters in it. Cut out a yellow beak and a red gobble.
Write the letters on the construction paper feathers. Alternate colors. Lay the pinecone on its side and glue the feathers in order to the back end of the pinecone.
Glue the brown pom to the front end of the turkey. This is the head. Glue the eyes, beak, and gobble to the pom so the turkey has a face.
If you want to add a special touch, add orange pipe cleaner legs. Twist the pipe cleaners into three-pronged feet and then glue the feet to the bottom of the pinecone. The back of the pinecone will rest on the table and the feet will support the front end.
Repeat for each guest at your Thanksgiving dinner.
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The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 to celebrate the pilgrims’ first successful harvest. The celebration lasted several days and included indoor and outdoor feasts. Sometimes the pilgrims and Native Americans ate together, as shown in Brownscombe’s painting, and sometimes they ate separately.
In Henry A. Bacon’s Landing of the Pilgrims you can see the Mayflower in the distance as a few of its passengers unload from a lifeboat onto Plymouth Rock. Bacon was born in 1840 in Massachusetts and fought for the north in the Civil War. He studied art in Paris and went on to produce many paintings designed to tell a story, like this one painted in 1877. Notice the girl who is preparing to step from the boat. She is 15 year old Mary Chilton, said to have been the first pilgrim to set foot in the Massachusetts.
These two seem to be very accurate paintings of this historical event but there are others which do not follow the accounts we have of the landing. Henry Sargent’s Landing of the Pilgrims is one such painting. Here you see the Native Americans greeting (or confronting) the pilgrims as they land. This did not happen. It was about three months after the pilgrims landed when the Native Americans approached them for the first time.
Next week: paintings of the first Thanksgiving, plus Thanksgiving craft projects!
The Mayflower Compact was signed by the 41 men on the ship before they went ashore. Edward Percy Moran’s The Signing of the Compact in the Cabin of the Mayflower, shown here, is one artist’s idea of what this might have looked like.
In the painting shown above, La Plage de Trouville by Monet, you can actually see the sand that was blown into the paint by the wind while Monet worked (en plen air) on the beach. That alone is worth the trip if you ask me.
