Ideas for a Preschool Thanksgiving Feast

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather together, fill up on good food, express gratitude for their blessings and enjoy some fun games. You can provide such an experience for your preschool children with a few non-traditional foods and some paper hats. Here I provide you with a simple outline to a successful preschool Thanksgiving feast.

Invitations

You will want to invite your students' parents to the Thanksgiving feast. Let your preschool students make the invitations! Write the details of the Thanksgiving feast on the inside of a folded piece of construction paper. Now let your preschoolers decorate the front of the invitation. Have each child trace one of his hands. Then let your preschool students color the "turkeys" in, using a finished hand print that you have posted on the white board or table as a guide. Let them finish off their turkeys with a googly eye and a quick swipe with a red crayon for the wattle. Be careful not to criticize their turkeys. Always keep in mind that it is the process, not the finished product, that is important. This is about self-expression, one of the blessings for which we are thankful.

Tuck the invitations into the children's backpacks, reminding them to give them to their parents when they get home.

Decorations

Pilgrim hats and Native American headbands with feathers: Instructions for making a girl's pilgrim hat can be found here. Instructions for making a boy's pilgrim hat can be found here. For Native American headbands, simply measure a strip of construction paper around each child's head and staple it. Let the preschoolers decorate the headband with crayons or markers and then tape or staple a feather to the back of the headband. The children will wear their choice of head attire to the Thanksgiving feast.

Napkins: Provide each student with paper napkins (cloth is ideal ecologically if you can afford them) to decorate with a turkey or other Thanksgiving motif stamp.

Cornucopia wall decoration: This is a class art project. Your students will work on it together in small groups. Enlarge a coloring page of a filled cornucopia. Let your preschool students either paint or color the picture with markers. Post the cornucopia picture to a wall or white board in your classroom.

Food

Keep the menu simple. Most children enjoy chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, milk and cookies. A week or two before the Thanksgiving feast, post a sign up sheet on your classroom door for the foods you have selected as your menu and also for paper plates and plastic spoons, forks and cups.

Gratitude

Prior to the feast, ask each child what he or she is thankful for. Write the answer down on small sheet of paper for each child. At the dinner, let the parents read the replies and then add their own answers to the sheet of paper, as well.

Games

If time permits, you might want to have a few simple games ready to play. The key word here is simple. Your classroom is going to be crowded, so you don't want any unnecessary complications to make the event difficult. Some game ideas are a memory game using Thanksgiving stickers that you have placed on small squares of poster board, "Hot Turkey" using a stuffed toy turkey in place of a potato and Pin the Feathers on the Turkey.

I wish you a beautiful celebration of blessings! Happy Thanksgiving to all.