A First Grade Thanksgiving

Yesterday was a day filled with Thanksgiving festivities! Our day started with some last minute practice for our play and a "dress rehearsal" during which I recorded the performance. We still had some time to kill before the parents arrived, so we played some Sight Words Bingo, which the kids adore.


At about 10:45 "Mr. Kevin" arrived to meet my class. If they weren't already hyper enough, that put them over the edge for sure! He stayed throughout our feast and performance and hung out with us. As he was leaving, I jokingly asked him "Would you like to trade jobs with me?" With a dead serious look on his face he replied "Not in a million years."

Shortly after Kevin arrived, the parents started trickling in. I found out later that the Kindergarten classes were having their feasts at the same time as first grade, so apparantly there were over 200 parents trying to sign it all at once in the office. Next year we'll have to coordinate better. We ended up with over 60 adults in my classroom for the party! Only two students did NOT have someone come for them, and luckily the other parents were very attentive to them so that they felt included.

We started out with our play. The video is too long to post, so I'll just post a couple of pictures. I wish you could see the whole thing, though. They were AMAZING. So many parents commented on how "polished" they were. I was a proud teacher :)


Then they sang their two songs, which were also adorable. My favorite is a funny one about having too much turkey on Thanksgiving. The other is a spin-off of the Twelve Days of Christmas, called The Ten Days of Thanksgiving. Both are too long to upload and post, but you don't know what you're missing!!! After the performance was over, it was time to feast! All of the parents brought something to contribute to our table. I unfortunately did not get a chance to snap a picture of it before everyone dug in. Several of the kids decided to change into their "fact family headdresses" to eat. Here are some pictures of the kids (and parents) enjoying the food, which was delicious.



The parents had all cleared out by a little after noon. We took the kids outside for a nice long recess to give them a chance to run off all of that sugar from the feast. Some of them decided to sleep instead. Here's 'Jake' enjoying a nap in the afternoon sun, on a nice bed of...rocks.



Other kids took the opportunity to play very silly games, such as the one below, in which a raptor attacks other students on the playground:


When we got inside, we read some Thanksgiving books and watched "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving." Just as I had remembered from last year, it was a crazy day, but also a wonderful day. I really enjoy the opportunities to just spend fun time and "hang out" with my class. Unfortunatly, there are not as many of those times as I would like!!!

I hope you all have safe travel and a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!