[arielhud]

I teach really young kids, mainly, and since I'm in Japan, most of them have never even heard of Thanksgiving. Japan pretty much throws Christmas lights on right after Halloween (or sometimes before) so it was really hard to teach them anything this week.

What I ended up doing was focusing the lesson more on the general, universal feelings of the Thanksgiving season: fall foliage, the harvest, etc. I set up a paper tree in the room that kids decorated with puffy red and yellow pompoms and maple leaf name tags, and crafts for the week included making a scarecrow on a chopstick, drawing hand turkeys and playing BINGO.

Part of the problem for me is kids didn't know exactly WHAT a turkey is. Luckily my school has a turkey and peacock stuffed animal, so I could at least show them the similarities, but it was hard to describe Thanksgiving as anything more than a food festival in the West.

As far as teenager approved food- the stuff you listed sounds fine to me, though pudding pie is always a good addition XD