Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip
What it is: Scholastic has a wonderful site and interactive for students to investigate the first Thanksgiving. Tomorrow, November 16th (2010), your class can participate in a Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip. In this 30 minute online field trip your students will get to meet a Pilgrim and a Wampanoag—straight from Plimoth Plantation. This Virtual Field Trip brings the Plimoth Plantation Museum to your students. This is sure to be a fun trip where your students can experience the first Thanksgiving in a new way. In addition to the field trip, your students will receive “letters” (emails) from the Pilgrims and Wampanoags making the experience even more memorable. The site has the original interactive activities for your students to explore before or after the field trip. Download the free classroom guide and sign up today!
How to integrate Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Filed Trip to your curriculum: This virtual field trip is a fun way for your students to “experience” the first Thanksgiving. Students will begin to understand what life was like for the Pilgrims and Wampanoags that first Thanksgiving and hear first hand what struggles they faced. The virtual field trip brings the actors from the Plimoth Museum into your classroom. Watch the field trip from your classroom using an interactive whiteboard or projector-connected computer or bring several classes together in a larger space like the library. After the field trip, set up classroom computers with the rest of the Scholastic Thanksgiving activities. Here students can explore the Mayflower, learn about daily life of the pilgrims and the Wampanoags, and check out the first Thanksgiving feast. Scholastic provides a wonderful teaching guide that will help you use this site to its fullest.
Tips: Here are some of my other tried and true favorite sites for Thanksgiving:
Black Dog’s Thanksgiving fun and games
Scholastic’s First Thanksgiving
Investigating the First Thanksgiving
Free Rice and see how we used it as a Thanksgiving activity here
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Thanksgiving: Plimoth Plantation Virtual Field Trip in your classroom!