My Favorite Thanksgiving Primary Sources

This week really starts the Thanksgiving season for me. The five class days before the Thanksgiving break, the students and I do different kinds of Thanksgiving activities. Really, we analyze and investigate all kinds of Thanksgiving primary sources, kindergarten through fifth grade.

I know this might not sound like fun, not compared to crafty activities or reading a great Thanksgiving picture book. I would argue that it is better though. I see it as a discovering of knowledge about Thanksgivings past. In each grade, we focus on a different primary source or set of primary sources, and we don't just analyze them. We try to go further. This is something that I try to emphasize with my students. What do you do with that knowledge about the primary source you just analyzed? What can you connect it to? How can it help you look at something else in a different way?  How can you use it to compare life now to life at another time? For this set of activities, we typically talk through this. In other activities, we may write or illustrate. With the excitement that leads up to Thanksgiving break, the students often want to talk, so I take advantage of that.

I thought I would share my favorite Thanksgiving primary sources.

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Kindergarten students will be analyzing a wonderful photo from 1911 of students in a schoolyard titled
School Children's Thanksgiving Games. In the photo, some students sit on a bench watching other students who are in different Thanksgiving costumes. My favorite find in the photo, a child wearing a turkey mask, hasn't been seen by a student yet. See if you can find it.
After analyzing this photo, students compare these students celebrating Thanksgiving to their school celebrations at RM Captain.

In first and second grade we move the celebration from school to home and analyze photos from the Crouch family's Thanksgiving taken in 1940. These twenty photos are a wonderful snapshot of a Thanksgiving day in a large family's home. While the photos don't individually contain the detail that

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the 1911 school photo does, as a group, they are rich with information about culture and tradition.
In first grade we will focus in on a photo of Mrs. Crouch pouring water on the turkey, the photo of the pies with the family visible in the mirror's reflection, and the photo of the whole family eating with the children at a separate table. Students will fully analyze one of the photos with the Observe, Reflect, Analyze model (using I see, I think, and I wonder) and do a lighter, quicker analysis of the others where we focus in on only what we see. Similar to kindergarten's comparison to school, first grade students compare their home celebrations to the Thanksgiving celebration in the photos.
In second grade, students will analyze several photos in groups, focusing their analysis on where events are taking place in the photos. In groups, they will attempt to create a map of the Couch's kitchen where the meal was cooked and eaten, highlighting furniture and other points of interest from the photos in their map.

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Third grade students are going to be building on the first grade idea of the Thanksgiving meal
traditions and be planning their own Thanksgiving meal with a primary source twist. The class will collaborate on items for the meal and then shop in two places. Two groups will use a current local grocery store advertisement. Two other groups will use newspaper advertisements from about 90 years ago. The two advertisements, the first from 1919 and the second from 1922, list many items that students may use today. I'm eager to see if it does the job. While we won't be doing a traditional analysis on these pieces, I'm looking forward to the math and problem solving connections.

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Fourth grade students will work with my favorite Thanksgiving primary sources. Earlier this year, our fifth grade classes did a primary source analysis to learn about a lost Halloween tradition. Our fourth graders will learn about a lost Thanksgiving tradition. They will first analyze a hundred year old photo of Thanksgiving Maskers, a group of boys dressed in costume who look like they are more fit for Halloween night. Following their analysis, which may leave more questions than answers, they will read a newspaper editorial from the same time period where the writer shares her distain for the maskers tradition of walking down the sidewalk banging pots and blowing horns, and asking passersby for pennies or candy while families are trying to enjoy their Thanksgiving. Learning about this lost tradition gives students a chance to be historians and investigate the a tradition completely foreign to them.

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Finally, in fifth grade, students will be looking at Thanksgiving officially being named a national
holiday with Lincoln's 1863 proclamation while analyzing an 1861 drawing of Civil War soldiers celebrating Thanksgiving in camp. Hoping that students see that Thanksgiving was being celebrated before being named an official holiday, they will then use a secondary source to give them an overview of other presidents making Thanksgiving proclamations going back to George Washington.

I'm looking forward to this week with students before Thanksgiving, not just because of the great primary sources that they will be interacting with. I'm also looking forward to the K-5 experience throughout the entire building all connecting back to different learning around Thanksgiving as well as the potential experiences that students have year after year with these primary sources.

When that 92 Year Old Halloween Newspaper Article ISN'T a Primary Source

What makes something a primary source? Before I attended the Library of Congress Summer Institute, I thought I knew, but a definition by the Library of Congress, has helped me evolve that definition.

The Library of Congress gives three descriptors when defining a primary source. They describe primary sources as the "raw materials of history." To further define this, they also describe them as "original documents and objects which were created at the time under study" and differentiate them from secondary sources which were "created by someone without firsthand experience." I revisited this definition recently when preparing a Halloween activity for fifth grade students.

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Students like looking back in time. What was Halloween like 50 years ago? 100 years ago? Primary sources can provide answers to those questions. For this activity, I focused on a 1896 drawing of a woman, her hand resting on candle and looking into a mirror with a reflection of a man. I had looked at the image many times and it made little sense to me. I thought it might be a reference to a ghost or deceased loved one, but her lack of expression confused me.

Recently, I explored Chronicling America for newspaper articles on Halloween. I found a 1922 article titled Mischief Night which may explain the photo. The article references a superstition that on Halloween a woman could hold a candle to a mirror and see her future husband's face. The article implies that she must be walking down the stairs backwards when doing this, but the general idea is portrayed in the drawing. I felt it helped to shed light on the drawing and it was short enough that I could use it as part of a lesson on this lost superstition.

As I prepared to use the article, I asked the question, was this a primary source? If I was asking myself what Halloween was like 120 years ago, this newspaper writing didn't qualify. It was written 92 years ago, a generation after the drawing was created. In addition, the article read, "Time was, when Hallowe'en..." when describing the superstition with the mirror, referencing something that existed in the past. In this context, this article was a secondary source.

Did I still use the article? Absolutely. Students analyzed the drawing and, in small groups, came to consensus on what the illustrator was trying to portray. They then read the article and had an opportunity to revise their thinking. The lesson went wonderfully and as part of that lesson, the students and I had a great discussion about what makes something a primary source. Finally, I asked the students what I could do if I wanted to confirm this account from 25 years after the drawing. A couple of students suggested that finding a newspaper from 1896 that referenced Halloween could be a solution. From there I was able to briefly share two primary source articles, one from 1891 and another from 1895, that referenced Halloween as a night to "reveal your future spouse's face" and when "maidens try to find out who will wed them."

Something being "old" doesn't make it a primary source. Instead, looking at the time period you are studying will help to define if that image, map, document, or object is a primary or secondary source and while that doesn't determine whether you will use it or not with your students, it can impact how you approach using the resource.