November 26th was all about giving thanks at Meili Middle School and Shuofang Middle School in Wuxi because it was a JESIE Thanksgiving Open Day! Junior 1 students were treated to a demo lesson about American Thanksgiving. We had a little bit about history, a little bit about Thanksgiving Day customs in the good ol' USA, and a lot about delicious Thanksgiving Day food!

The lessons, designed and implemented by Tom, Rebecca, Kathleen and Val, started off with a quick explanation about the origins of American Thanksgiving - Pilgrims went on Mayflower, Mayflower came to America, Pilgrims almost starved to death, Indians taught Pilgrims how to grow pumpkins and corn and hunt turkey, Pilgrims invited Indians to a big feast.  Like we said: short!  

Then we looked at all the most important Thanksgiving feast foods, such as turkey (the star), stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, and pumpkin pie.  It was a good thing we had the demo lesson after lunch, otherwise we would have been too hungry to play the Thanksgiving Vocabulary Game.   

After a few more descriptions of what Americans do for Thanksgiving, where a comparison to travel in China during the October holiday week brought much understanding, we moved on to everybody's most favourite part of the lesson - games! Our teachers and students had a lot of fun doing a "Thanksgiving Turkey" word scramble, making hand turkey cards and saying what they were thankful for.

All in all, let's give thanks for another great JESIE Open Day extravaganza! Gobble, gobble!