This Thanksgiving celebrate friendship with your students. Create your own simple classroom Friendsgiving or Thanksgiving celebration! Your students will love sharing a special meal with their friends and are sure to share a few laughs along the way too. It's the perfect way to spend an afternoon with your students. You'll need just a few things to make this celebration one to remember. Here are a some tips to get you started.
Get started a couple days before your Thanksgiving event with some art projects for your students. They will have fun getting creative and you'll love how easy it is to set up a memorable event with items they made. To start I used the orange gingham tablecloth roll. Just roll out onto your table and cut. I covered all of my student tables with a tablecloth. For our Thanksgiving there were 8 students at a table. On each table I placed a DIY color your own Thanksgiving table runner. Just set out some paper cups with crayons and you have an instant fun station where your students can relax and color.
Next, we worked on decorations for our classroom. Just take a few orange polka dot or striped fans, mix with some solid orange tissue fans and staple in a cluster over your existing bulletin boards. Have students help assemble the pumpkin pie felt banner. Let's face it pumpkin pie is definitely the best part of any Thanksgiving celebration. Layer with some plain burlap banners underneath the pumpkin pie banner and you have decorated your room for the big event!
These paper plate turkeys were a hit with my students! They just took a few minutes to assemble and made for a quick art project. The turkeys decorated the walls around our classroom during our class party. They make a cute keepsake for our students to take home and share with their parents as well!
These foam turkeys make great centerpieces for your tables. They simply slide into a foam holder so assembly just takes seconds. You could also use them as place cards by adding your students' names with a Sharpie®.
While we prepare for our Thanksgiving lunch I like to do a lesson on manners. We talk about manners we should use at the table and my students role play some do's and don'ts. As we talk I also teach them about place settings. We practice using napkins, paper plates, and cups to set the table. It's also fun to have your students create their own turkey napkin rings during this activity. Take a thanksgiving napkin and wrap an orange plastic fork and spoon inside. Assemble the felt turkey napkin ring kit and slide the thanksgiving napkin and orange plastic fork and spoon inside.
Once your table is all set you're ready for your Thanksgiving lunch. Before we got started on our meal we went around the tables and shared what we were thankful for. In the spirit of Thanksgiving each child got a chalkboard feather to write one word on. The word they chose represented what they were most thankful for. As we went around the table they would say what they were most thankful for and then add their feather into the turkey centerpieces scattered around the tables. This was the sweetest classroom conversation. When it came time to enjoy lunch our students used their manners to assemble their plates and took turns at our Thanksgiving buffet. Ahead of time I'd asked parents to send in food items to share so students were able to fill their plates buffet style. If you're restricted to using school food you could easily just bring your school lunch into the classroom or have students bring in a lunch from home. Just do whatever works best for you and your students!
After our lunch was over and the plates were cleared our students enjoyed rotating to different tables to have conversations with their friends. I put a list of conversation starters on the board and my students were challenged to learn something new about each friend in the classroom. As the students chatted I came around with some fun Thanksgiving photo props for pictures. This was such a fun day of fellowship and fun! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
