Happy Thanksgiving!!  I hope you enjoy this special Holiday with your family and friends.  Take a moment and look around at all of the many things we have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I know I have many things to be thankful for:  my beautiful, healthy family, this wonderful community, and our freedom!  

And if you are brave enough to go out on Black Friday - I hope you find some great deals!  Happy Shopping.

The Little Gym in Thousand Oaks is having a special Black Friday Camp for Kids on Friday, November 27 for all those parents planning on doing some shopping on Black Friday!  Check it out here!

The OaksParent.com Team

1. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.
2. By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.
3. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.
4. The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.
5. The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.
6. The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.
7. The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of 'Mayflower'.
8. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.
9. They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.
10. The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.
11. The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.
12. The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.
13. The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.
14. The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.
15. President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.
16. The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.
17. Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.
18. Abraham Lincoln issued a 'Thanksgiving Proclamation' on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.
19. President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and thus stimulate the economy of the state.
20. Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

As found at The Holiday Spot

Thanksgiving Tablecloth
You will need:
Plain white table cloth
Fabric paint
Printing items- here are some suggestions:
Use potatoes to cut desired shapes into and use to print on the cloth.
Sponges- these can also put cut using scissors to make a great print for example a pumpkin.
Feathers
Corn Cob

For a nice flat surface to work on wash and iron the cloth first.
Place the cloth on a clean wide space and lay down protective newspaper.
You can use a paper or styrofoam plate to put the paint on.
Try and choose fall colors and colors that bear the message of Thanksgiving to you- gold, brown, green, orange, red etc...
Nature print: Trace pics of characters like turkey(s), the face of native Indians from any book and use pencil to print them on the material through the tracing paper.
If you want to include leaves as a print item you can get them from outside your house and trace them right on the material with a pencil and paint later. The more characters the more diversity. But don't make it look clumsy and cluttered.

PAPER PLATE HAND TURKEYS
You will need:
Paper Plates
Pencil
Scissors
Markers/Crayons/Colored Pencils
(Optional: leaves, acorns, goofily eyes and glue)

For each turkey, you need one paper plate. Place your hand in the center of the paper plate, spread out so your fingers are separated. Trace your hand with a pencil. If you need help doing this, ask a parent or older sibling to trace.
Carefully cut out the hand on the plate. The thumb is the head of the turkey and the fingers are its feathers.
Use markers, crayons or colored pencils to color your turkey. Be sure to include eyes on your thumb so your turkey can see.
If you're feeling very creative, use leaves or acorns on the fingers for feathers and paste goofily eyes on the turkey. You may need to have two plates for that to support everything.
Put your turkey on display on the fridge so everyone in the family can see what you made!

You can also use this idea to make waste plates for thanksgiving dinner. After you make the outline, don't cut it out, rather color it inside. You can also stick the cut outs you have made inside a plate to turn them in thanksgiving waste dinner plates.

Also found at The Holiday Spot