I love teaching the girls through stories. At their ages, I feel this is the absolute best way to teach history to them. All. The. Books! We read a lot together every morning during Morning Basket and I read them at least 3 books each night during bath, then more for bedtime and most days we read some throughout the day as well. Always reading.

Here are my picks for the girls for Thanksgiving this year. These are books we already have and also a new book I just purchased for Lilly Belle today because I remember reading it in first grade and loving it, Dear America: A Journey to the New World. I remember reading it independently and keeping the Dear America books in my desk and choosing to skip recess to read them.

Lilly Belle loves the Who Was and What Was books. For November we will read What Was the First Thanksgiving. These books give the perfect amount of information for her age.

I got the book, What is Thanksgiving, with Lucy in mind. This book is actually wonderful for both the girls. It talks about how yes, all the food and football and family and parades are fun, but we are all so thankful for God who gave us those things.

We have been using the Passport to Adventure curriculum which focuses on each of the Magic Tree House books. We will be skipping ahead for the first week of November, and reading Thanksgiving on Thursday which is book #27. These books are so much fun and at the same time packed full of fun information and history! Perfect for a kindergarten / first grader.

Our girls love The Berenstain Bears so we have two Thanksgiving books with them; Thanksgiving All Around and The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks. I feel like these books are always teaching great morals and lessons to the girls. They are a bit long for Lucy (about to turn 2) but she will play and listen along while I read them to Lilly Belle.

If You Sailed on The Mayflower in 1620 is another great history book for littles. This book does not focus solely on Thanksgiving, but more on the Pilgrims and how they got here and then it does have quite a bit of pages about Thanksgiving and how it was celebrated for the very first time.

Ever since I was little, my absolute favorite Thanksgiving tradition is that we woke up bright and early to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while my mom started cooking and cleaning before family arrived. Every year my mom would move our kitchen chairs into the living room so she could scrub the floors. My brother and I would make a train out of the chairs and pretend we were on the floats. We did it every year. Now with our girls we continue watching the parade except we do not have family here in town so there is no cleaning involved. We make cranberry strands to hang for Christmas and Matt makes a huge breakfast skillet while we watch. I love it so much! When I found this book on Amazon I was so excited! We were going to go to New York for Thanksgiving this year so I could take Lilly Belle to the Christmas Spectacular, but I’ll be a bit over 20 weeks pregnant and we weren’t expecting me to be walking. This book makes me so happy! We’ll be reading it all month long!

I’d love to hear what your favorite books are about Thanksgiving…!