The First Thanksgiving            

What do you know about the very first Thanksgiving?  If you are in school, you probably think that the first Thanksgiving has to do with Pilgrims, Indians and lots of turkey.  What would you say if I told you that the first Thanksgiving was about water, a dove, and a rainbow?

Most of you know the story of Noah and the great ark he built.  God told him to prepare for a huge flood.  It took him 100 years to build and all his friends and neighbors thought he was crazy!  Rain…..they had never seen rain, so how could there be a flood?

Of course, when he started to fill the ark with animals of every kind,  they didn’t know what to think..  Can you imagine what it looked like inside - lions, and tigers and bears - oh, my!  The only people who believed in Noah and what God had told him were his family.

When the rains finally came, all the  people who had laughed at Noah wanted to get in the ark, but it was too late.  God had made a safe place for Noah, his family and all the animals.  For 40 days and 40 nights, it rained.  For almost a year, Noah and his family floated in the ark with all those animals. 

Finally, God used a dove to tell Noah that it was safe to leave the ark. The Bible tells us in Genesis 8:20 that the first thing Noah did was to build an altar to God and to make a sacrifice of thanksgiving.  God had saved Noah and his family from the terrible flood. In the sky, God hung a rainbow as a sign of His promise to never destroy the earth by flood again.

The pilgrims did hold a  feast to thank God for their good year, but remember that Noah celebrated the very first Thanksgiving.  What has God done for you?  Remember that we don’t need a special day to tell God  THANK YOU

 

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HAND PRINT WREATH

 BY Jennie McGuffee

Make a wreath of thank you’s filled with all the things you and your family are thankful for. You will need:

12″ Styrofoam wreath, Assorted decorative and/or colored papers, Black marker, Raffia, Colored craft sticks,

Glue, Scissors 

Write the names of friends and family or other things you are thankful for on the hands, or clip special photographs to the craft sticks with mini clothespins and push into edge of the wreath.

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