If you’re already done with school before the Thanksgiving holiday, LUCKY YOU! Enjoy your much-deserved rest and relaxation. For the rest of you, I’ve generated this timely project, “Plan a Friendsgiving Dinner,” you can use in your classroom in the early parts of next week, even if attendance, motivation, or both are low in your personal finance classes.

The gist of the project is your students work in groups (whatever size you prefer) and they hypothetically plan a Friendsgiving Dinner, in which they each bring a dish to share. They can pick traditional Thanksgiving foods or really any other dishes if Thanksgiving isn’t the norm in your school’s community. You know we love to let you customize here at NGPF.

Each group member picks the dish(es) they’ll bring; finds a recipe; and then fills out a spreadsheet with the unit price for each ingredient, the total cost, and the cost per person. If they’re doing this part at home, they can visit the local grocery store for prices. If you want all the work to be done in-class, they can use prices from the internet (large chains frequently have prices online, many grocery stores now put their weekly flyers online, or they could “shop” at internet grocery stores, even if that service isn’t actually available in your city).

They then combine their price findings into one budget for the entire Friendsgiving Dinner and reflect as a group on their project. If you want to take it a step further, you could make it a competition in your classroom. Have them present their group’s dinner plan to the rest of the class, and then vote to see who’s meal was most delicious, most cost effective, etc.

The project involves lots of high level skills — internet research, collaboration, spreadsheet usage, time management, creativity — and solid personal finance content — unit price, budgeting, comparison shopping. It might also make them appreciate the time, effort, and money their family may put into pulling off a holiday meal.

Enjoy!

About the Author

Jessica Endlich

When I started working at Next Gen Personal Finance, it's as though my undergraduate degree in finance, followed by ten years as an educator in an NYC public high school, suddenly all made sense.