Hello all. We just started the PTA at my daughter's preschool from scratch. A little about the preschool: We are a church school located right off a military base. All the kids are military dependants. We have about 30 students right now (3 classes). Its a very very small church, the preschool is what keeps it opened.

My questions: We are doing a Thanksgiving dinner in November but we didn't want to do the traditional dinner. We thought an Italian theme would be a good idea (pastas, salads, breads, etc.) One mom suggested doing what snoopy did during the snoopy thanksgiving movie. They ate pretzles, toast, easy stuff like that. (the peanuts kids made the food) I really don't think basic snacks is the way to go for the dinner, but maybe having the parents help the kids make a dish would be a good idea.

Are there any other suggestions out there? This isn't a fundraiser. Each class is responsible for a certain type of food and the PTA will provide the 'main dish'. Its just a way to get all the families together and have a good time.

Have you thought of pulled pork sandwiches? They are super easy to prepare, most of the work is done prior to serving. One class can bring the buns, one class cole slaw or salad and the third class the dessert.

We reciently had mass screening here at our school to which, I made lunch for not just our volunteers, but the teachers as well. We had mexican style shredded beef with taco shells and flour tortillias and all of the trimmings for the tacos, pinto beans and my dil's mom made spanish rice, and we had pink lemonade bundt cake for dessert. It all got ate up!! My idea of thinking is, if you feed them good, you'll always get volunteers to help you. I look at it as a way of saying thank you.

I think that you are on the right track. Making each class responsible for one food item will make things easy.

Italian is easy and cheap!!

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll talk this over with the teachers and see what they would like to do

We celebrate Thanksgiving in our elemenary school with a variety of foods. We have noticed though that many of the younger children do not enjoy the turkey but LOVE the sides. We serve mac n' cheese, cornbread, mashed potatos (with vegetarian gravy as well as turkey gravy), stuffing and mini cupcakes for dessert. Over the last few years, we have cut down on the turkey and upped the mac n' cheese as the kids inevitably go for that.