November Catch Up: Second Grade Thanksgiving Party

The two second grade classes partnered for the Thanksgiving party. As one of the room moms, I did a lot of planning. The other room mom took the lead on the food and I took the lead on the activities.

We had a true feast in the classrooms. (This was made remarkably tricky due to some serious peanut allergies affecting a kid in each class.) We stuck with mostly finger foods to keep it easier and cleaner. There were turkey and cheese sandwiches, apples, potato chips, olives, carrots, celery, wassail to drink, and pumpkin pie for dessert. The kids loved it!

My job was to be in charge of the activities. This stressed me out because it was going to be a 3 hour party. It began with a wordsearch for them to work on while they were eating or waiting to be served.

While they were finishing up eating, the kids read their letters. I had arranged with the teachers beforehand to have their students write a letter as if they were the turkey pleading with the farmer not to eat them for thanksgiving dinner. The letters were hilarious! I gave prizes to 2 students the teachers selected as doing a noteworthy job.

Then we had a dad volunteer to do some storytelling (Timpanogos Storytelling Festival style) about the first thanksgiving. The kids did remarkably well in the story as he worked really hard to involve all 50 of them.

Then we went outside for games. I had 5 stations that we rotated the kids through in about 7 minutes per station. I had gunnysack races, fruit basket with Thanksgiving pictures, clothespin drop, Indian Corn passing without hands, and pumpkin rolling. Since we had the party on the Friday before Thanksgiving, the weather was beautiful and the kids had a great time getting out all their wiggles.

Oh, and there was a live turkey. Yep, the other room mom keeps turkeys and brought one of them to show the kids. It was WAY cool!

I had nixed the idea of making graham cracker turkeys (stupid peanut allergies) but that worked out fine because we didn't even have time for the movie. Yep, I worried so much about the time that I planned too much.

I loved being able to spend that special time watching Laura interact with her classmates and getting to know all the kids that she talks about to me at home.