Mayflower Day! (+ printables!)

Going with the onslaught of belated Thanksgiving posts...

Here's a snapshot of our Mayflower Day!  

I saw the idea of making this Mayflower book over here at First Grade Parade (where I get at least 50% of my ideas!).  I loved it so much I decided we had to have our very own Mayflower Day here at Gettin' Skooled.

Here is a a glimpse of the book that Merrick and I made together:

I had cut the pattern out the night before from 3 different brown paper grocery bags.  They were so kind at the local health grocery store, Sprouts, and just handed me a stack of bags for free!  See the video below for more info on how I pasted the pages together.

Here are a few of the pages...

First, Merrick colored a map of the crossing of the Mayflower.  Then, he filled in a couple of fact sentences.  Next, he drew a picture of his favorite pilgrim.  Then, he wrote a sentence about why he chose that particular pilgrim as his favorite.  This is where the fun always comes in for me.  I thought Merrick would choose the two little boys we read about because they caused so much trouble (like almost burning down the Mayflower).  However, Merrick chose Myles Standish because, "he looks cool."  

In case you'd like to make your own Mayflower book, here is a link to the printables we made to go inside the pages.  For the brace map and graph, you can download those at First Grade Parade.  

Click here for the printables:

Did You Know?

Fact Book (cover)

My Favorite Pilgrim

Crossing Mayflower Map

Mayflower Border (for drawing your fave pilgrim)

And, of course, like every lesson plan here at Gettin' Skooled, it always goes over best with a nice cup of hot cocoa.  :)

Here are the books we read together about the Mayflower and the pilgrims:

For dinner, we had a Mayflower French Toast Pizza.  The sail is a slice of mozzarella cheese.  Don't be fooled by these pics.  The sail only stayed up for about 3 seconds before toppling over.  I think my pizza wasn't thick enough to hold the dowel in place (and the cheese slice should probably be frozen for a few minutes to harden it up before skewering it).

Though Merrick sweetly smiles for these pics, I don't think he is too impressive when I make him special meals like this.  Unless the special meals are made of sugar cubes or cake.

Here's the video of the Mayflower book to give you a more tangible idea of how it was constructed:

Merrick's last line in this video is soooooooooo typical...