Whether it’s turkey, dressing and all the trimmings or a smorgasbord of family favorites, Thanksgiving is typically celebrated around a table with family and friends.

It is also a day dedicated to giving thanks for the many blessings one has received.

During the month of November, Crawford Street United Methodist Church Playschool teacher Stacy Weaver focused on the holiday’s significance and incorporated a variety of art projects and stories her young students could enjoy while also learning valuable life lessons.

“In preparation for Thanksgiving, we learned about friends and families working together, getting along and sharing, and we read some great pictures books about sharing and celebrating with food,” Weaver said.

Some of the books read, Weaver said, included “Stick and Stone” by Beth Ferry, “The Kindness Quilt” by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, “Thank you, Omu” by Oge Mora and “Stone Soup” by Marcia Brown.

“Stone soup is a fable about making soup from a stone. All the villagers come together and add items to the stone soup, and it feeds the whole village,”

Weaver said. And to demonstrate the value of shared communal resources, Weaver said the students all brought different ingredients for the soup that they then helped prepare by cutting up the vegetables. Parents were then invited to the school to enjoy the Thanksgiving feast prepared by their children.

“The children also helped make decorations for the class Thanksgiving feast. They gathered sticks for a thankful tree and decorated the leaves with things they were thankful for. They also made thankful placemats by drawing the things they were thankful for,” Weaver said.

Four-year-old Hudson Lowe said he was very proud of his thankful placemat and was excited to talk about all he had drawn.

“That’s my kitty and I’m thankful for filling up the water in my cat’s bowl,” he said.

“And I’m thankful for helping my dad play Fortnite and that’s my dad,” Lowe said, as he pointed to picture he had drawn of his father.

Lowe had also drawn a picture of his grandmother on his thankful mat and a picture of Charlotte.

“I’m thankful for helping Charlotte,” he said as he pointed to one of his classmates. “She is the one with the white bow in her hair.”

Five-year-old Easton Hodge also chimed in to say, “I am thankful for my little brother and Miss Stacy,” as he held up his thankful placemat.

Hanging out by the thankful tree was four-year-old Thaddeus Sharp. In line with their placemats projects, the students had also written what they were thankful for on the construction paper leaves.

“I’m thankful for my puppy dogs, Isabelle, Josephine and Leopold, Sharp said. “And I’m thankful for my friends.”

Another art project the class did for the feast was to make a tablecloth.

“We did friendship color mixing,” Weaver said. “Each child painted their hand one color and would then hold hands with a friend to make new colors and make hand prints on the paper. We used their friendship paintings for our tablecloths for our Thanksgiving feast.”

Leading up to Thanksgiving and after reading “The Kindness Quilt,” Weaver said the students also made their own kindness quilt.

“The children each made one square for the quilt by drawing an act of kindness they did for someone, and after everyone made their square, they connected them all together with yarn.”

In addition to Weaver’s three, four and five-year-old class’s focus on Thanksgiving, Dell Rogers – who is a longtime preschool instructor and teacher for CSUMC’s readiness and enrichment class – taught her students about the Thanksgiving story as it pertained to the settlement of the new world and vocabulary words that corresponded.

Teachers for the one-and-two-year-old class made Native American shirts, necklaces and headbands, CSUMC Playschool director Elizabeth Whittington said, which they wore that last day of school before the holiday.