Thanksgiving Two-School Celebration
Our two schools (nine classes of kindergarteners, approximately 165 students) collaborate to re-enact a Thanksgiving Celebration. Sculptor Charter school demographics are completely opposite from Endeavour's, which enables our two groups of students to learn from each other and experience tolerance and diversity by meeting, learning and playing with each other. Three classrooms of Sculptor "Pilgrims" venture forth to find the New World and "discover" six classes of Endeavour Native Indians. We sing together, the Indians teach the Pilgrims how to do an Indian dance and we sit down to feast together by sharing our "bounty." Afterwards we play together, just as the original Pilgrims and Indians did. Learning prior to this meeting includes learning about the history of Thanksgiving as well as the types of food available, which the Indians provided (popcorn, pumpkin bread, beef jerky). This collaboration extends into future discussions about how Pilgrims felt traveling to a new and possibly scary place as well as how the Indians felt having to meet new and different people and how they might have communicated without having a common language as well as how they felt about sharing their "world."