The Mayflower

This ‘song’ is taken from The Mayflower play – a Readers Theater script which is made up of 5 parts:
1. Background
2. Mayflower Voyage
3. First Sight of Land
4. First Winter and Spring
5. First Thanksgiving

This is available this month at half price from TeachersPayTeachers or free (with another purchase) from www.plays-r-ussell.com the website of playwright/teacher Sue Russell. Also available at half price this month: scripts on Sacagawea and Early Colonial Times - again in Readers Theater format. For extracts see preview in TPT or visit Sue’s website and see her complete collection of curriculum-based (Social Studies, Citizenship Skills, Science, Geography) and non-curriculum-based scripts e.g. on Christmas.

Extract from Mayflower Song

The Pilgrim Fathers went to sea
Old patched trousers on their knee
All they wanted was to be free
Those brave Pilgrim Fathers.

They set off from their homeland
But their trip was hardly planned
Who’d have thought that they’d been banned
From their very own country?

Holland did not work out well
With strange Dutch ways they couldn’t gel
Across the ocean their eyes fell
Upon the shores of Virginia.

Two ships set off, not just one
It’s unlikely they had fun
Especially when water by the ton
Poured into Speedwell’s bowers.

Just the Mayflower fit to sail
Things went fine until that gale
Then directions them did fail
And sent them too far northward.

Deciding to accept their lot
Plymouth or Virginia, it mattered not.
Just as long as they found a plot
To settle their weary bodies.