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feMOMhist is NOT loving how Thanksgiving is taught to children.
Following a now infamous Columbus day debacle in which my five year old son came home proclaiming Columbus to be "the smartest and the bravest" (note 30 seconds of looking at a globe convinced him otherwise "Mom, why did he name them Indians?), feMOMhist volunteered to come into the Kindergarten classroom to discuss Thanksgiving.
Some twenty or so children’s books later, feMOMhist concluded that
1) Thanksgiving for children is replete with errors (note to Scholastic, Virginia the current state is NOT the same thing as the Virginia Company)
2) Thanksgiving has been transformed into a falsified celebration of multiculturalism (note celebrating the small pox epidemic that appeared to be a smiting from the Lord on those annoying natives who refused to see the truth of Christianity is not exactly an acceptance of diversity)
Thus feMOMhist set out to concoct a reasonable lesson that avoided the phrase “can you say genocide children?” I decided to use Tomie de Paola’s My First Thanksgiving mostly because the text is so simple that it avoids the perils noted above.
I then adapted from Scholastic’s admittedly excellent graphics and somewhat accurate information a powerpoint that I printed and put in sheet protectors as a mean of “illustrating” my history lesson.
When I joked to little feMOMhist-son’s teacher that the sole memory of my kindergarten Thanksgiving lesson was making butter, she seized upon the idea, apparently missing my irony. Thus, we will be shaking cream until it becomes butter and slatering it on cornbread that will undoubtedly taste better than the Pilgrim’s food (note thus far little feMOMhist-son has been most impressed by the Pilgrims' lack of sugar).
COMING SOON obligatory Pilgrim/Indian pictures of “feast day” at little feMOMhist-son’s school
Links to ponder should you care to elucidate your children further and/or need to correct JUST PLAIN WRONG SHIT their school is no doubt going to tell them.
Interesting perspective on the holiday from an Indian who is a school teacher
Excellent depiction in We Shall Remain first episode “After the Mayflower”
Everything you ever wanted to know about the first Thanksgiving from the people at Plimoth Plantation
