Cranberry Thanksgiving

Written and Illustrated by Wende & Harry Devlin

Key Scriptures:
1 Samuel 16:7b (NNAS) "for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
Psalm 118:1 (NKJV) Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.

In this Thanksgiving story from the Cranberry series, we were reminded that we should not judge people based upon their outward appearance, but rather try to see them as the Lord does. Maggie's grandmother demonstrated poor judgement in shunning Maggie's friend Mr. Whiskers because of his appearance while she welcomed a thief with open arms because he smells of lavender. However, Mr. Whiskers saved the day and then demonstrated true character in giving up the last piece of pie to the repentant thief.

Even though it is not actually a part of New England we placed our story disc on the state of New Jersey. We did so because the fictional town of Cranberryport (setting of this and the other Cranberry books) was reportedly inspired by a boyhood camp experience of Mr. Devlin's - on a cranberry bog in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This was also a good review as we had briefly "visited" New Jersey during our time with They Were Strong and Good.

We enjoyed learning a little bit about cranberries: how they got their name (crane-berries), how they are mostly hollow inside, how the air spaces inside make the berries float (review of buoyancy from Ping), and how this buoyancy is used in harvesting the berries. We compared the taste of fresh cranberries to "Craisins" (sweetened & dried cranberries). We also tried our hand at dyeing some fabric scraps using chopped cranberries and hot water. We got a lovely pink color (Claire's favorite).

We also learned about various means of leavening. We demonstrated what happens when baking soda (alkaline) and vinegar (acidic) are mixed and how the bubbles (of carbon dioxide) would form air pockets in the baked good and cause them to rise. We talked about how there had to be some sort of leavening agent in the cake mix we used to bake Justin's birthday cake. When we baked the cranberry bread recipe in the back of the book, we noted that the orange juice would provide the acidic ingredient to react with the baking soda. When we baked bread to take to our neighbors' home for Thanksgiving dinner, we also talked about how yeast causes baked goods to rise. These baking activities were also a good opportunity to talk about fractions (how two half-cups equal one whole cup, etc.).

Also in the science realm, we talked about what starch is, what it is used for, and how we can test for it using iodine. We clearly saw the iodine react with starchy foods to produce a distinctively purple color. I did not have any spray laundry starch at the time, or we would have tested this as well. We related this to what it meant for Mr. Horace have his "starch" leave him.

We talked about the history of Thanksgiving and why we celebrate it. On Thanksgiving Day we sang some Thanksgiving songs and reviewed Psalm 118:1 which was one of Claire's memory verses for Awana. We also looked back and discussed some of the activities that we did at our church homeschool group's Colonial Day celebration. One of those activities was making silhouette portraits, which we also tied in with the silhouettes in the book.