How to Teach Children the Meaning of Thanksgiving

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner, and today, I'm going to talk with you about how to teach your children the meaning of Thanksgiving. We all know that Thanksgiving means a time of coming together and going to relatives' houses to go and have dinner. Of course, you want to keep this tradition, and you want to make sure that kids know that Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for the family that they have and the luxuries that they have, as well as just giving thanks for living in general. But also, what you want to teach them, which may be a little more difficult, is the back story or the story of Thanksgiving. And the easiest way that I've found to do this is actually use the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, especially for little kids. About 25 minutes long, this cartoon actually details the supposed journey of the pilgrims to this country where they met with, you know, the Indians and had...and broke bread with them, and then gave thanks for actually being able to live. The Charlie Brown Thanksgiving actually gives a pretty accurate or a pretty realistic feel...feeling portrayal of the desperation of the pilgrims so that your children will actually feel as though they're watching something relatively real and accurate. Next, what you can actually do to help your kids learn this back story of Thanksgiving is to enroll them in performing arts classes where they will sort of star in their own production re-telling the story of Thanksgiving -- the first Thanksgiving, that is. So you can do many different things. Also, you can sort of tell your kids about the Thanksgiving food that you're making, and sort of pass down the traditions to them in that way. And of course, also read them stories having to do with the back story of Thanksgiving. So there's just some ideas for teaching your kids about the meaning of Thanksgiving."