Remembering the First Thanksgiving at Plimoth Plantation

November is a good time to visit Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Thanksgiving Day was first celebrated nearly 400 years ago. This historic museum village recreates the one built by the Pilgrims when they arrived in 1620, and, to make it even more authentic, the costumed interpreters who go about the everyday tasks of the 1600s even speak in the language of that time.

Stepping inside the primitive homes, watching the hard manual work of everyday living and speaking to actors who seem unaware of any time since they arrived in the New World brings American history to life for kids. The village becomes believable to kids, and, with a little encouragement from parents, they are soon conversing with people from another age.

It is helpful if they understand ahead of time these people they meet are playing parts, so they have put themselves into the mindset of the 1600s. They will pretend not to understand any reference to the 21^st-century world. Suggest kids ask questions about what they are doing, where they came from in England and why and how they came here.

It won’t take long for kids to catch on, and treat Plimouth Plantation like a time machine. They can ask about the real people who lived here, such as Miles Standish, whom they may have heard about in school. They can ask how people kept warm in the winter in these tiny houses, what they ate when the gardens were deep in snow and why the village is surrounded by a stockade.

You won’t need to suggest many questions, because the interpreters are adept at drawing questions from young visitors as they talk about their lives. They can’t, of course, compare them to modern-day living — that’s up to you to suggest as you stand inside one of the houses, framed in small trees and sheathed in rough-hewn boards. The cracks are filled with reeds and grasses mixed with mud to form plaster, and the roofs are made of reed thatch.

Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts © Stillman Rogers

Even if you can’t travel to Plymouth to see the village, your children can learn about the first Thanksgiving through an award-winning interactive program offered on the Plimoth Plantation website. Kids can become a history detective and find out what really happened at the famous 1621 celebration. They can read letters written by people who were there, visit a Pilgrim’s home and discover Wampanoag traditions. They can even play museum curator and design and print their own Thanksgiving exhibit panel to take to school. (And for home-schooled students, this activity is designed to conform to national curriculum standards.)

Although the Mayflower II, a replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620, is elsewhere being restored until spring 2019, they can learn about it and the crossing it made from England in another interactive program, The Journey of the Mayflower II.

Plimoth Plantation is open daily, 9 a.m–5 p.m., until Nov. 25. Plymouth is an hour south of Boston via I-93 and Route 3, and also can be reached from the city by MBTA Commuter Rail from South Station.