The weather was perfect for today’s annual 2017 Thanksgiving Feast. Every student, teacher, and many parents helped with making the food. On Wednesday and Thursday, the primary classrooms helped with snapping beans and shaking cream to make butter. The elementary classrooms made and baked the rolls and pumpkin pie with the middle school, who helped them. They also made the cranberry relish, cut celery, chopped onions, and peeled potatoes. The students were organized into groups and they took turns during the day with preparations. They enjoyed mixing the ingredients, learning how to bake and at lunch, everyone had a chance to taste a roll and a small slice of pumpkin pie. On Friday, parent volunteers and students helped with setting up the tables and final food preparations. Our annual Food Drive was also in progress and we collected 365 cans!
It has also become an annual tradition and service project for the middle school to facilitate Devereaux’s Make Christmas Bright project. Deveraux has a list of needy children in the foster care system and we make “wish tags” for parents and students to choose from. During the Thanksgiving Feast, we finished making the tags and hung them on a divider and put it outside. Families purchase the item and when we have all the presents a pickup is scheduled and we help load them into the truck. Over half of the tags were taken and there are still some left.
The elementary classrooms performed small showcases on the day of the feast. lower elementary performed an alphabet musical, where each of the students held a sign with a letter on it and they said things they were thankful for that started with that letter. The upper elementary students practiced for their small showcase, which was a wax museum. They dressed up as important and influential people throughout the ages and told information about their character to the guests. The peacemakers they dressed up as were from all over the world and from different time periods. There were people like Maria Montessori, Malala Yousafzai, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and many other influential people.
The feast started at 11:00, but the parking lot was already full by then. Parents started coming into the classrooms to watch the presentations and they joined their children for food. The food that all the classrooms made were displayed for all the people to eat. All the students accompanied their parents to serve themselves with food and drinks. The pumpkin pie was the popular desert and many had a second serving, because they were very good. Some children enjoyed playing on the playground while some parents talked happily with each other and others cleaned up. It was a very eventful and joyous day where everyone came together and laughed and talked throughout the day, while learning about the history of Thanksgiving and eating food. The whole school community had a great time and were already excited for the celebrations to come.