Madeleine Choir School students celebrate Thanksgiving
SALT LAKE CITY — "We got ready for the Thanksgiving feast by churning butter, making headdresses, and painting turkeys," said Sam Brown, a kindergarten student at the Madeleine Choir School, Salt Lake City. "We made cornucopia place mats and vests out of paper bags. We colored them with crayons because they are picture stories. It’s lots of fun." Students from the Madeleine Choir School kindergarten and first grade classes met as Native Americans and pilgrims respectively for a Thanksgiving feast Nov. 20, in Erbin Hall on the Madeleine Choir School campus. Audrey Pohl, a first grade student said, "The pilgrims came from Europe and crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower. The Native Americans were nice to them. They named their new land Plymouth and started building houses. The Native Americans taught the pilgrims how to plant food and bury fish for fertilizer because they did not have any. They had a Thanksgiving feast that lasted three days and they were thankful for the Native Americans." "We spent last week talking about the first Thanksgiving in 1620 and imagining ourselves as pilgrims," said Jamie Kmetzsch, Madeleine Choir School kindergarten teacher. "We talked about how the pilgrims traveled from England to America on the Mayflower. We studied their clothing and how the boys wore hats, breeches, and stockings, and how the girls wore hats and aprons." The kindergarten students learned about the games pilgrim children played such as nine-pin, which is similar to bowling, and stool ball, which is similar to baseball. The learned how the pilgrims made their houses out of wood and their roofs from reeds and grasses and how the children did chores. "We also talked about the Native Americans and how their clothing told a story," said Kmetzsch. "We introduced the students to turkeys since most of them would be eating turkey on Thanksgiving. They learned a baby turkey grows 5,000 to 6,000 feathers in a lifetime, which the children found amazing." Meegan McGill, Madeleine Choir first grade teacher said each of the first grade students wrote about what they do as a family for the Thanksgiving holiday. "In science the first grade students are studying oceans, so we tied the fact that the pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean to come to America into our science lesson," said McGill. "The students also made finger puppets and retold the story of the first Thanksgiving using a finger for a turkey, a pilgrim, and a Native American. The first-graders made Thanksgiving costumes which included collars for each student, hats for the boys, and bonnets for the girls." At the Thanksgiving feast, the first-graders read a Thanksgiving poem and the kindergarten class gave the prayer.
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