Harding students savor an early Thanksgiving feast

Youngstown students learn about Pilgrims, then savor an early Thanksgiving feast

By HAROLD GWIN

VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER

Learning about Pilgrims, Native Americans and the first Thanksgiving can be fun, but perhaps the best reward for completing your lessons is a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.

Some first and second graders at Harding Elementary School had that experience Friday, sitting down to a dinner as the culmination of a month-long study of that period of American history.

Most of the food, and a chef to prepare it, was donated by Avion on the Water, a Beaver Township estaurant. The children dined on turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, corn and cranberry sauce. They had pumpkin pie for dessert.

“They’ve worked really hard,” said Roseann Jeswald, the special education teacher who works with both the second-grade classroom of Paula Valentini and the first-grade room of Mary Kay Colacino.

The students learned sign language, built a cardboard totem pole and learned a song about Thanksgiving dinner which they sang for visitors. They also demonstrated their sign language proficiency.

It was an integrated curriculum, Valentini said, explaining that in addition to history, the students did picture writing, worked on math facts related to the topic, did some mapping to show from where the Pilgrims came and where they landed in the New World and learned about Native American customs.

They also had an American Indian speaker visit. Dave Williams, a school district custodian, is part Cherokee and spoke about Native American customs and brought in some artifacts for the children to examine.

“We’ve tried to incorporate the topic into different subjects so it had more meaning for them,” Valentini said.

For dinner, her class all wore Indian headbands that they’d made out of construction paper.

Second-grader Casia Mason said the students used a picture dictionary provided by Jeswald to select figures to draw on their headbands. Hers included some teepees, some Native Americans and a bear, she said.

David Morgan, also a second grader, said he liked learning about how an American Indian named Squanto helped the settlers by teaching them how to plant corn.

“Squanto taught the people all they needed so they would have food for the winter,” he said.

Second-grader Ja’Lionda Bowers said she learned a little more about her personal history.

“I’m part English and part Cherokee,” she said.

The dinner was a big hit, as evidenced by comments from some second-graders.

“I like my cranberry, my stuffing, my bread,” said Malcolm Lambert as he dined.

“I think I’m going to go to bed when I get home,” offered William Cornwell, suggesting that the turkey made him feel sleepy.

gwin@vindy.com