An American Thanksgiving: Family Edition (All Three Levels)

How a harvest feast in 1621 became a national holiday. Your children meet the people who carried the idea of a day of thanks from Plymouth to the White House. Everyone studies the same story each week, at their own level, so the whole family can talk about it together.

Family Edition: all three levels in one file. 28 printable letter-size pages. Each week has the Primer (ages 6 to 8, read together), the Ledger (ages 9 to 11), the Journal (ages 12 to 14), and one shared Family Key.

The four weeks

• Week 1, The Harvest of 1621: the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and Squanto at Plymouth.
• Week 2, A Nation Gives Thanks: George Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation of 1789.
• Week 3, The Mother of Thanksgiving: Sarah Josepha Hale's long campaign, and Abraham Lincoln's answer.
• Week 4, Over the River: Lydia Maria Child and the poem that became a holiday song.

Memory work. The Primer learns the first two stanzas of "Over the River and Through the Wood," and the Ledger learns four. The Journal learns all ten stanzas of Felicia Hemans's "The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers" (1826).

The Family Key gives the answers for all three levels, what to look for, a dinner-table question with a version for each age, and background for parents.

Instant PDF download. No prep: just print and go. Print as many copies as the children in your own household need.