As you count down the days until Thanksgiving break, get your students working together to plan a Friendsgiving dinner as they learn about budgeting with some team building and culture sharing mixed in! Read on to learn more about the activity. 

The Plan a Friendsgiving Dinner project is part of the NGPF Budgeting unit and gets students into groups to plan a potluck Friendsgiving dinner. They’ll build a menu, comparison shop for ingredients, calculate costs, and complete a group budget. 

So what exactly will your students do?

• Step 1: Form groups.
• Step 2: Collaborate to plan a menu of what dishes they will bring to Friendsgiving. 
• Step 3: Each group member provides a recipe for the item(s) they’re making. This allows them to see which groceries they will need to buy.
• Step 4: Each student will complete a Recipe Expense Report, for each recipe item in their Friendsgiving dish(es).    
• Step 5: Bring each of their expense reports together and compile the information into one Friendsgiving Dinner Budget. 

Students will submit a copy of each recipe, their budget, and responses to the reflection questions. 

Teachers say this works best when you include lots of opportunities for class discussion and use the spreadsheet video in the footers for support.

You can also incorporate a related FinCap Friday video (P.S. a new Thanksgiving one is coming out this Friday!). 

We hope your students enjoy this fun, relevant, and timely activity! Happy Thanksgiving!  

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Check out these other related activities:

Semester Course - 9.5 Budgeting for Food

Middle School Course 2.3 - How to Read a Receipt

DATA CRUNCH: What Is the Relationship Between Household Income and Food Security?

About the Author

Hannah Rael

As NGPF's Marketing Communications Manager, Hannah (she/her) helps spread the word about NGPF's mission to improve the financial lives of the next generation of Americans.