This Thanksgiving, we want to thank you for being our loyal customers! We are thankful for your questions, your honest feedback and suggestions, your comments of appreciation, your willingness to share with one another, and your commitment to your child’s learning.   We’re thankful you express when you’re upset with us, and we’re thankful you express when you’re super excited about what we’re doing. Your contributions have made this blog a place of dialogue, and we are excited to see what comments we have waiting for us when we come in, each morning.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Pumpkin Pie Play Dough

You will need a few household ingredients to make this wonderful concoction:

• 5 1/2 cups flour
• 2 cups salt
• 8 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 3/4 cup oil
• 1 (1 1/12 ounces) container pumpkin pie spice
• Orange food coloring (2 parts yellow, 1 part red)
• 4 cups water

Instructions:

1. Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.
2. Cook and stir over medium heat until all lumps disappear.
3. Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is smooth.
4. Store in an airtight container or a plastic bag.

Now you are ready to play! Remember, while this play dough might smell as good as a real pumpkin pie, it is not meant to be eaten!

Like this activity?  Share it with friends!

When you print out the two-page template, we suggest you orient it horizontally (Landscape setting) and reduce the top and bottom margins. When we scanned the tree in, a few gaps were created in the outline where the trunk and the branches meet, so connect those according to what looks natural to your eye.

Click the image to print.

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, you can find the thoughtful Giving Thanks Tree post here.  We hope that works for everybody.  We’re thankful for your comments; keep’em coming!  Hmm… looks like we need to cut and fill out another leaf!

Make your friends lives easier.  Share the update!

• Could you imagine pledging allegiance to our proud national bird, the turkey? Our good old friend Benjamin Franklin actually wanted the turkey to be the national bird.
• A turkey’s field of vision is 270 degrees – one of the main reasons they’re able to elude some hunters.
• Wild turkeys can fly up to 55 miles per hour over short distances, but their domesticated cousins cannot fly at all.
• Gobble, Gobble, Gobble! Everyone knows that turkeys gobble, but did you know that only male turkeys gobble to woo their mates. Female turkeys actually make a clicking noise.
• A turkey’s head changes color when it becomes excited.
• The red fleshy growth under a turkey’s throat is called a wattle. Turkeys also have a long, red, fleshy area that grows out of the forehead over the beak, called a snood.
• Turkeys can actually have heart attacks. When the U.S. Air Force was conducting test flights to break the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.
• The heaviest turkey ever recorded came from our British friends across the Atlantic. This gobbler weighed in at a massive 86 pounds and looked about the size of a large German Shepherd!
• Turkeys aren’t always turkeys. In fact, a turkey under 16 weeks of age is called a fryer. A five to seven month old turkey is called a roaster.
• The Turkey Trot, a ballroom dance in the 1900s, was named for the short, jerky steps of the turkey. It became popular mainly because it was denounced by the Vatican as suggestive.
• Turkeys can actually drown if they look up when it’s raining!
• Turkeys are known to spend the night in trees! (Maybe to escape the Thanksgiving table?)

Get your friends to get with the turkey trivia!

We made our Native American vest JumpStart-themed! From left to right: Kisha, Hopps.

Native American Vest

What you’ll need:

• 1 Brown grocery bag
• Pencil
• Paint or markers
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Draw a thin line from the top, open end of the bag toward the bottom of the bag.
2. Make large circles at the bottom of the bag, and at the bag sides, towards its bottom.
3. Cut along the pencil line, including the circle.


Cut along the drawn lines, including the circles.

4. Trim the circle as needed to make enough room for your child’s neck.
5. Cut fringe into the bottom of the vest, as in the picture.  Shorten the vest to prevent the child from tripping, if needed.
6. Use the paint or markers to decorate the vest with designs.

Frankie swinging by the river to get a drink of water.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving-themed attire!

Tell your friends to diversify their kids’ closets with a new vest for this holiday!

While the entire family looks forward to celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and eating delicious food, there is one thing that most people do not look forward to: the long car drive to and from a relative’s home! Boredom is really almost a guarantee.  However, with a few fun car game suggestions, you and your family can enjoy the hours of driving together.

Alphabet Race. The goal of this game is to find each letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order, on the road signs you see throughout your journey. This game may seem easy, but just wait till you get to letters such as “Q” or “X”! See how fast you can accomplish this feat.

Hug Bug. You might have played this game a little differently when you were growing up, but we are making it much less…painful.  If you see a Volkswagen Beetle or “Bug” you get to give one other person in the car a hug or blow them a kiss!

The Frankie Game. In this game, the word “Frankie”, as in our lovable mascot, is substituted for a verb. To play, one person picks a secret verb like “swim”. Then everyone else asks questions using “Frankie” in place of the verb. “Can you Frankie in the ocean?” “Can you Frankie in the house?” The person who correctly guesses the secret verb gets to choose the next one.

Your Ideal Car. This game requires your family to use their imaginations! Pick a car on the road -even yours- and have each person say one thing that they would want to add onto the car to make it into the car of their dreams. For example, you could say, “I would add on a frozen yogurt machine to the car, so I could have frozen yogurt whenever I wanted!” Keep going until your family thinks they have created their ideal car!

The Teacher’s Dog. We at JumpStart love learning, so this game is perfect if you want to build up your child’s vocabulary on the road! In this game you will go through the alphabet using words to describe the teacher’s dog, the first letter of the descriptive word corresponding to the letter of the alphabet you are on. For example you could say, “The teacher’s dog is an Angry dog.” Then the next person would say, “The teacher’s dog is a Boring dog.” See if your family can find adjectives to describe the teacher’s dog from A-Z!

Question Game. In this game, you are only allowed to speak in questions to everyone in the car. For example one person could ask, “When are we going to get there?”  The next person would ask, “Do you have a watch?” The next person would ask, “Did you take it?” If you do not answer in a question, you are out. The winner of the game is the person who can carry on the conversation in questions the longest!

What are your favorite car games?

Share with some families that are in for a loooong drive.

Make Your Own Butter

All you need is:

• ½ pint of heavy cream
• 1 clean pint jar or other similarly-sized container with a tight cover or lid, preferably plastic
• 1 clean marble

Directions:

1. Take your jar and place the marble inside
2. Pour the cream into the jar and screw the cover on tightly.


Three Materials and You're in Business

3. Have the children shake the jar. A figure-eight motion seems to work best, but let your kids go wild (not so much, if the jar is glass). If you have a plastic container with a tight lid, you can even roll it back and forth.
4. Listen for the marble bouncing up and down.
5. After the marble cannot be heard anymore, you’ll know the cream is thickening.  Keep shaking, and you will soon start to see the glob of butter form.


The Marble Will Go Silent as It Is Enveloped by the Butter

6. Once a good amount of butter is created, drain out the buttermilk. You can throw it away, save it, or drink it!
7. Wash the remaining lump of butter by running cold water into the jar and draining it. This will remove any trapped buttermilk.
8. Find and remove the marble
9. Place the butter into a container of your choice to store or use.

The End Result: a Delicious Scoop of Butter

What is this science magic that has just unfolded before your eyes?

Heavy cream is what is called an “emulsion”.  An emulsion exists when tiny droplets of one type of liquid are floating around in another type of liquid that does not like to mix with the first. In the case of heavy cream, tiny globules of fat are suspended in mostly water. By shaking the heavy cream in the jar, you are forcing the fat globules to slam into one another. If they hit each other with enough force, they will simply stick together, the fat collection becoming bigger and bigger with each extra globule.  After enough shaking, the fat globules form a chunk of butter.

To bring this experiment even further, have your children try different types of cream, such as light cream or whipping cream; each of which has different fat content. They can compare the shaking time needed, the amount of butter created, and the butter’s taste at the end.

This experiment is definitely a workout and will require a good amount of shaking, so, if you have a child that is smaller or has a short attention span, think of using two smaller containers (and a marble in each one) to speed up the process.

Tell Your Friends to Shake It Up

We’ve placed 20 Thanksgiving items throughout the world.  10 of which will be located on MainStreet, and the other 10 will be found in the Downtown district.  This post will unveil the secret locations of all the hunt items, but Shhhh!  Keep this revelation quiet, unless your explorers are really having a tough time.

Some items will be easy to find.

Others will be more challenging, such as this set of Pilgrim clothing off a Downtown beach.

Our designers did a good job hiding the items, so don’t be surprised if your smaller explorer might need some extra direction.  If that sounds like your child, dive into these spoilers.

Spoilers start HERE!

Downtown District Item Location Explanations:

1. Cornucopia Feast – In between the Ridez and Petz shop, near the gas pump at ground-level
2. Fall Harvest – Under the rock arch on the Beach to the east of Threadz, ground-level
3. Ship – Northeast corner of Downtown’s northern-most ocean, near the boundary behind some standing rocks at sea-level
4. Balloons – By the rocks and wood bridge in the back lot, beyond the backside of the Newsstand, at ground-level.
5. Ship – In Downtown’s southern-most ocean, east of the orange slide drop-off, at sea-level
6. Balloons – At the base of Downtown’s southeastern-most waterfall, at second-story-level.  Walk along the cliff ledge, accessible by walking up the stairs at the blue slide base and over the two wood bridges.
7. Fall Harvest – Behind Petz shop’s back  brick wall in the corner, at ground-level
8. Cornucopia Feast – behind the brick wall behind the House Hut in the corner at ground-level
9. Pilgrim Clothing – by the blue stairs at the blue slide base, at ground-level
10. Pilgrim Clothing – On the south side of Downtown’s northern-most ocean, behind some beach rocks on the sand, at ground-level

MainStreet Item Locations Explanations :

1. Pilgrim Clothing – By the movie theater’s front-left corner, behind the art billboard, at ground-level
2. Fall Harvest – By the tree on the left from your very starting position near the stone ramp, at ground-level
3. Fall Harvest – On the beach north of the AdventureLand Sub, at ground-level
4. Balloons – In front of the Adventureland Sub, on the boardwalk, at ground-level
5. Ship – In the southeast corner of the ocean, beyond the MarineLand portal and lighthouse, at sea-level
6. Cornucopia Feast – On the beach, leading up to the lighthouse, to the southeast of AdventureLand, accessible by swimming through the ocean, at ground-level
7. Balloons – Up the stairs to the Hall of Fame entrance, at ground-level
8. Cornucopia Feast – by the West giant waterfall with the aqueduct, in front of the statue to the right of the water, at ground-level
9. Ship – At the base of the small waterfall north of the Speed Drome near the western wood bridge, at ground-level
10. Pilgrim Clothing – Between StoryLand and the FutureLand back-entrance, hidden behind a tree and a pile of leaves, at ground-level

Click to enlarge this map with numbered item locations, marked with stars.

Know Somebody Who Needs the Inside Scoop?

A Tree Full of Thanks.

The Giving Thanks Tree

Materials:

• Large, brown cardboard box
• Construction paper in yellow, green, red, and orange.
• Scissors
• Tape
• Pencil
• Sharpie

Instructions:

1. Cut manageable, large panels out of the cardboard box.
2. Have your child draw the outline of a tree in pencil, complete with big roots, a trunk, and strong branches, on the brown cardboard.  *Update*: Here is a printable template of the tree outline we used.  When you print out the two-page template, we suggest you orient it horizontally (Landscape setting) and reduce the top and bottom margins. Fill in any gaps created in the outline by the scan, according to what looks natural to your eye.
   

   Click the image to print.

3. Cut out the tree.
4. Trace around the new tree cutout on another panel of brown cardboard, and cut out the duplicate tree.


Trace and cut out a duplicate tree.

5. On one of the trees, cut a slot up the center from the bottom of the tree and ending an inch before its top.
6. Cut about a one-inch slot down the center of the other tree, starting from its top.
7. Combine the two trees by sliding them perpendicularly into the slots you’ve made.  The root bases should end up solidly on the surface you’ve been working on.  Adjust your slot cuts if you need to even-out the lengths.


Set up the tree trunks perpendicular to each other.

8. Cut out leaves from the construction paper and have the family write down what they are thankful for on each of the leaves with the Sharpie.


The JumpStart Team's items worthy of thanks.

9. Adhere the leaves to the branches with the tape.

Tape the leaves to the tree branches.

When completed, the Giving Thanks Tree can act as a truly eye-catching and thought-provoking Thanksgiving decoration for a mantel, coffee table, or centerpiece.  Here at JumpStart, we’ve had a blast filling out the leaves for our Giving Thanks Tree, and we’re certainly thankful for your viewership.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Tell Your Friends About the Giving Thanks Tree and How Thankful You Are for Them

Make this strapping Tom Turkey.

Pine Cone Turkeys

You will need:

• A decent-sized, opened pine cone
• Red, yellow, and orange construction paper
• A brown paper bag
• Glue
• Googley eyes

1. Take the different-colored sheets of construction paper and cut them into three differently-sized feather shapes: large, medium, and small.  (You can fold the paper in half, draw half of each feather on the crease, and cut them out.  Unfold the cutouts, and you should have easy, symmetrical turkey feathers.)
   

   Draw and cut out large, medium, and small feathers.

2. On the last layer of pine cone scales, glue on the largest feathers. Glue a red, yellow, and orange feather to one pine cone scale, and make sure to put them in random order in terms of color.
   

   Place the feathers in random color order according to size.

3. On the second-to-last layer of scales, glue on the medium-sized feathers.
4. On the third-to-last layer of scales, glue on the smallest feathers.
5. Cut a circle out of the brown paper bag for the turkey head, and glue on the googley eyes.
6. Cut out a yellow beak and a red wattle and glue them to the head.
7. Wrap it up by gluing the head to the front of the pine cone.

Feel free to make a gang of pine cone turkeys and set them in your centerpiece for Thanksgiving or place them around the house to add that holiday touch!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Get a Rafter of Pine Cone Turkeys in Your Friends’ Rafters.