It's Thanksgiving Time!

This year Thanksgiving will fall on November 24th.  This traditional American holiday is celebrated to commemorate the early settlers of our country and the Native Americans that harvested the land.  The date of the first Thanksgiving is debated by many historians but many agree that it was held in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1921.  Families across our nation, typically celebrate this meal with a large turkey dinner. It truly is a eating holiday and a time to be thankful for not only the food that we have to eat but the families and friends we have to celebrate with.  Many typical side dishes include mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, yams, green beans, corn, carrots, biscuits, and many other dishes.  Desserts are also a big part of the Thanksgiving meal.  Pies are popular on this holiday, especially apple, pecan and pumpkin.  My family also has cheesecake and carrot cake.  We also have cannolis and triamisu which are more traditional Italian desserts but we love to have these because we are Italian American.  You might be wondering why so many desserts Ms. Hermanek? Well, my mother, aunt and good family friend usually do the cooking at my mother's house and we usually have anywhere from 20-25 people over for dinner.  The eating begins at 1:00 with appetizers and good conversation and there's usually football on the television.  Everyone is encouraged to dress causally and to come and relax and have a good time.  It truly is one of my favorite holidays and I have always felt lucky to have it at my childhood home with my mother and aunts cooking a delicious meal.

Vocabulary:
1) traditional: something that is past on from one generation (older people) to the next generation (younger people).
2) commemorate: to remember, show respect for something
3) harvested: farmed, to get food from the land
4) debated: argued about
5) historians: people who study history
6) encourgaed: recommended to do something

Cloze Activity: Complete the following sentences by filling in the blanks with a vocabulary word from above:


1) The holiday of Thanksgiving has been studied by ______________ for many years.
2) The students were _______________ to bring in canned food for the Thanksgiving Food Drive.
3) My mother ___________ with my father over whether to cook the turkey in the oven or a deep fryer.
4) Fourth of July is a national holiday that ________________ the signing of the Declaration of Independence by our founding fathers.
5) Potatoes is a vegetable that is _____________ on Long Island.
6) The turkey dinner is the _____________ meal served on Thanksgiving Day.

Grammar Point
You know that synonyms are words that mean the same or close to the same thing.  Today, we are going to talk about antonyms.  Antonyms are words that means the opposite.  For example, you know the word traditional.  Traditional means something that is passed on from to generation to another, so it was been around for a while.  Modern is the antonym of traditional.  Modern means something that is new and recent.

Grammar Exercise
Now that you know what antonyms are, can you think of antonyms for the following words?  Write an antonym for each of the words below:

1) casual ____________
2) relaxed ____________
3) interesting ___________
4) busy ____________
5) flavorless ____________
6) full _____________