Thanksgiving with Buddy

Crispness can be felt in the cool autumn breeze, signaling that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. In addition to kick-starting the holiday season and gathering the family together, Thanksgiving is also a wonderful way to introduce your youngsters to different foods and healthy eating habits as well as family traditions and the customs that mark the various holidays’ celebrations.

As you prepare for your family’s Thanksgiving dinner, involve your child with the menu planning and shopping list. This experience can reinforce counting and basic math skills, provides a visual example of how we can combine things to make something totally different, and can also be used to invite picky eaters to try new foods. In fact, the Dinosaur Train webpage has a fun family project called Hungry Herbivores (http://www.pbs.org/parents/dinosaurtrain/activities/hungry-herbivores/) that can be used to construct a Thanksgiving dinner for modern day animals that enjoy a plant-based diet (herbivores). This fun project can also be used to encourage your child to eat Thanksgiving dishes like squash, green beans and other vegetables, just like the animals in the project. 


This colorful paperback book is great for read-aloud holiday fun as it follows Buddy and his family on their search for the biggest Cretaceous conifers, better known to us as Christmas trees, they can find to decorate for the holiday.

The story is guaranteed to get everyone in the holiday spirit (and makes a wonderful holiday gift, too) and can be used to discuss when your family will decorate your home for the holidays and the significance of those decorations. For ages 3 and up. MSRP: $3.99 at Amazon.com.