Showing Gratitude with Friendsgiving

We’re often so busy in our day-to-day lives that we forget to show gratitude to the people who care about us the most, our friends. So, we thought, instead of having a traditional Thanksgiving Day and Thanksgiving dinner, why not put a slight twist on events and celebrate Friendsgiving instead? Because friends are worthy of celebration!

Show gratitude with our fun Kami Library templates!

See these and more in the Kami Library.

A learning opportunity

Friendsgiving celebrations are the perfect opportunity to discuss the importance of friendship and the associated values of respect, kindness, selflessness, and openness with your students. It’s also a learning opportunity for students of all grades and ages.

Here are some Friendsgiving ideas for elementary students:

• Friendsgiving is all about saying thanks. We’ve got a stack of gratitude templates to choose from, so your students can reflect on the people in their lives that they appreciate the most.
• Why not have your students think about why gratitude is important? They could create A3 posters in groups, or prepare a presentation using a Kami doc. If your class is really confident, they could even prepare short speeches to practice their rhetorical skills.
• At this time of year, the traditional seasonal centerpiece, or cornucopia, is filled with the excess of the harvest. Instead of wasting delicious food, why not get your budding artists to name the vegetables and color in these cornucopias?
• Check out these colorful Kami seasonal templates. There are lots to choose from and for a range of subjects.

What about the older students?

• What better way to show gratitude this Friendsgiving than to prepare some traditional seasonal dishes? If your school teaches the Family and Consumer Sciences curriculum (FACS), why not get your students to cook some delicious traditional treats? Here are some delicious recipe ideas:
  • It’s called Turkey Day for a reason, right? Check out this recipe for the ultimate roast turkey with cranberry sauce!
  • If they’d prefer a plant-based Friendsgiving, there are some delicious plant-based options for you to try.
  • Don’t neglect your side dishes! Look at these yummy mashed potatoes!
  • If they’ll have room left, what about making a traditional pecan pie, or this delicious sweet potato and pumpkin pie?
  • If pies aren’t your thing, you could always whip up this New York cheesecake.
• Outside of culinary classes, why not have a classroom potluck? Your students could prepare the food at home and share it with their classroom friends. This is an amazing opportunity for your students to prepare food that they feel represents their culture. The class can then show gratitude for the many cultures that make up a society and the efforts of their friends! Not sure what a potluck is? Check out this Merriam-Webster definition.
• Instead of getting the students to color in a premade outline, why not get them to practice still-life drawing by setting up and sketching a cornucopia from scratch? They could use traditional art materials or Kami’s fully customizable Drawing tool to create a colorful digital sketch (there are 250+ colors to choose from!).

It’s game time

During the holiday season, it’s customary to have fun and play games. The games suggested in this section can be played in the classroom with your students, or saved for after school with your own friends. Here are a few ideas to choose from:

• Guess who — Each player has to write five facts about themselves that they think no one in the room knows about them and place them in a hat. Players take turns picking out a fact and try to guess the friend who wrote it. Three incorrect answers and you’re out!
• Finish it — Each player writes down 10 sentence starters and places them in a hat. They then write ten random words or phrases (keep it appropriate with your students, but, if you save this one for your own Friendsgiving celebrations, you can be as risqué as you like!) and places them upside-down in a pile. Each player is dealt five random words/ phrases. A random player is then chosen to start. They take a piece of paper from the sentence-starter hat and read it aloud. The other players choose the word or phrase they think is the funniest from their selection to complete the sentence. The player who reads the sentence starter then chooses their favorite response. The winner now selects and reads a sentence starter from the hat.
• Two truths and a fib — Each player has to come up with two truths and a lie. The other players can ask any question they like to try to deduce which statement is a lie. If the player who gave the statements successfully gets away with lying, they win a point. The first to five points wins.

Your very own friendsgiving

It may well be that you hang out with your friends all the time, but, for some people, life, work, family, or even oceans get in the way of spending time with their besties. Friendsgiving is all about putting a date in the calendar to prioritize your friends and give thanks for the love and support they’ve given you. If you’re lucky enough to be able to see your friends in person, why not host Friendsgiving and arrange a get-together with your best buds? You could go all out, cook up a storm, and host a lavish dinner party, or make the most of your day together and order your fave takeout (if you can all agree on a place!).

Skip the meal altogether, create The Ultimate Friendsgiving Party Playlist, and get the party started! You’re probably wondering how many songs have the word friend in the title… Well, don’t waste another second, because someone’s already done the hard work! Here’s a list of songs about friendship that you can add to your playlist.

If you and your friends are more inclined to a quiet night in, you can always get your comfy clothes on and binge-watch trending tv shows on Netflix. As long as you’re all together, that’s what counts! Here’s a list of films about friendship — surely you can all agree on one, right?

So why not focus on gratitude this year and celebrate Friendsgiving? It’s an annual tradition waiting to be started!