Classroom Thanksgiving Day Party

Small, asorted cheese cubes, small carrot and celery sticks with Ranch Dressing. Cheese sticks, sausage/cheese balls. Slice apples and soak in orange juice and can serve with the butterscotch dip. Small cupcakes decorated in Thanksgiving colors and you may find some little decoration to put on top. Try Party City or one of those places. You can order these kinds of things at Oriental Trading. They have great prices and ideas for all kinds of celebrations. Many children this age love little cubes of cantaloupe along with seedless grapes. Keep it simple and make all servings small. V.

you can get a recipe for easy pumpkin bread or muffins- monkey bread is good too and easy to make. a wassail or cider is good for a holiday drink. a holiday themed snack mix like popcorn with seosonal looking candies is good and quick. hope this helps

You could go with the whole Pilgrim theme and do dry fruits, you could toast some pumpkin seeds. There is a great pumpkin muffin recipe on foodnetwork by Ellie Krieger that is actually pretty healthy. You could also do apple cider for a drink.

Try to get them out of their chairs! It took me 4 years of preschool to realize the kids don't really like the "sit down, eat your snack and do your craft" party. Let them do a quick pilgram hat and go sailing in a pretend Mayflower - something they can role play and have fun! Bring some sails for the boys to hold and towels for the girls to wrap the babies - remember how cold it was in the new world?? (You don't have to mention half the colony died the first winter).
Ham and cheese on that thin sliced white bread was a hit for me last year. Add some grapes and water and be done with it! Send home a pumpkin cookie to eat in the car, don't waste the 15 minutes eating!
Have fun! J.

If no allergies you have the world of food at your feet. Mini muffins of some type, mixed dried raisins with cranberries are a great combo. Popcorn balls like before suggested. Rice krispy treats with peanut butter in them as well. Pumpkins cookies or one mom used to make these at my son's prek and the kids loved them, she made a cookie (rolled out dough type) using her hand as the cookie cutter design and would decorate each hand cookie as a turkey. The kids loved it! My sister would make a trail mix a baggie for each kid of popcorn, dried fruit, chex cereal and gold fish. She'd also take a plate of grapes and some banannas if they wanted those she'd cut them in half and they could have the trail mix as well.
They will love whatever you take for them.

An oldie but goodie -popcorn balls! Not sure if you're making ahead of time or making with the kids, but they're super easy and very kid friendly if they will be involved. Not sure why popcorn fits so well (except it is actually corn), but my whole life in school and as a little kid it seemed school and church Thanksgiving events featured it. It's also featured in "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" at their "feast". If that doesn't do it for you, there are a gazillion recipes online for pumpkin pie bars, pumpkin brownies, pumpkin muffins, etc. My personal fave is pumpkin bread. Just google any of that stuff!

Pilgrim Hats are an easy snack to make. My daughter and I made them last year for her friends in K3. This simple snack in made from fudge striped cookies, reese's miniature peanut butter cups, yellow decorator icing, and a little chocolate frosting used for cakes. You turn the striped cookie striped side down. Then you place some chocolate frosting on the top of the reese's cup, next turn the top of the reese's cup down onto the center of the cookie. All you have left to do is to place a little dot(square buckle) on the hat and you have a finished pilgrim hat. Last year we used the white frosting to attach the cookie and peanut butter cup so that when you placed them together the white frosting would spread out and form a band around the hat. We are doing those snacks again this year for her new friends in her Pre-K class. Good luck with the party.

Fruit,cheese and crackers are always good. Pumpkin cookie or
mini muffins. Also, use cookies cutters (pilgrim hats,pumpkins, or turkeys) and make cut outs of sandwiches.
Works great with peanut butter and jelly, check for any food
allergies first. If there are food allergies you could always use ham and cheese, turkey and cheese or just cheese sandwiches. Make sugar cookes with these cutters, too.
Have fun!

Turkey hand print sugar cookies. you can use chocolate chips for the eyes and frost them or use colored sugar and a little bit of red fruit leather for the waddle: http://www.familycorner.com/family/kids/recipes/handprint... I wouldn't color the dough like this but the candy corn is easier than icing them.

I was also blessed to be able to be with my daughter and help out for parties, etc as you are. We did turkey roll-ups(deli turkey rolled into a little log), cheese cubes are usually popular, as well as, sliced apple and grapes. You can do mini (tart-sized) pumpkin pies. I made pumpkin cookies- good, moist, not-too-sweet.(I used "Mrs. Spider's Pumpkin Cookie" recipe) or make turkeys with Oreos, malted milk balls, candy corn, etc. Have Fun!!!