Is there ethnic diversity in the student population? If yes, are the things in the baskets sensitive to such differences?

Maybe Thanksgiving poppers? With a note about how to open them and the tradition behind poppers. Fun for kids and adults.

Do the makings for the pie include a pie dish? Like a premade dough in a foil pan? The reason I ask is because the first thing I thought of was a pretty seasonal pie dish. Not a plain glass one. One of those beautifully decorated ceramic ones. Its reusable, yet seasonal so it is somewhat special and can even be handed down.

I agree with watchme. Any gift the entire family can experience together.

BTW, TG, thank you for wanting to include more than just a meal.

How about a can of cranberries. Maybe some recipes on how to make every thing. Not all turkeys have a built in pop up thermometer, so maybe a meat thermometer.

what's your budget and how many baskets are you preparing?

i like olychick's idea... i would go on the simple side.

something for dessert, good loaf of crusty bread, box of chocolates....

No "things". Yes, the idea is nice, but more appreciated would be things like the others have mentioned. Special treats, crackers or other toys, etc.

If there is extra money, a gift certificate to the grocery store would be an appreciated addition.

If you are wanting non-food, then maybe some sort of game they can play as a family like Uno or Checkers or anything interactive where you have to answer questions. I also like the puzzle idea.

I read your list of what you're including. I am curious about donating ingredients rather than pre-made like the pie. Has that been successful? The groups I've worked with have always donated pre-made. I'm not sure why.... maybe under the assumption that not everyone cooks. Do you add recipes also?

Something my kids liked to make when they were little were desserts. Maybe you could add a cookie mix, frosting, and sprinkles and a cookie cutter or already shaped cookies so they can decorate cookies.

I like the idea of something for the kids...card game, jigsaw puzzle, mad libs for older kids, outdoor equipment. No candles.

Texas...that is so nice of you to do this!

Kroger used to give away a Thanksgiving dinner every year. It included: turkey, loaf of white bread, celery, bacon, 5lb bag of potatoes, ready made pumpkin pie(many people won't spend the time or effort to put together pie making materials you give them, it needs to be pre-made)

I like the puzzle idea, something the whole family can do together. Dollar Tree has them! They also have gold or silver plates. Goblets. Table runners. Fancy!

No candles.

I agree to no candles.

Here's a simple idea, one of those fold out turkeys. We loved to play with them as kids, they don't take much space and are a traditional decoration.

Make sure the weight of the turkey is included and I agree about recipes on how to cook a turkey. A lot of meat stores now have a simple card. A turkey pan.

Paper thanksgiving napkins.

Art supplies. Crayons, markers, kraft paper, glue, maybe even some printouts with possible Thanksgiving related projects.

A gift card to the local grocery store. The org I belong to gives giftcards to the local food bank per their request. The gift cards is for the needed items that are not in the basket. The butter, milk, eggs, spices, brown sugar, marshmallows, fresh vegetables , etc. What ever extras they need for how the recipient cooks a thanksgiving meal. Also most baskets are geared to a family of 4. The gift card buys the extra needed if you have a family of more than 4.

You might email the local Petsmart and see whether they might donate a certificate to a free sample size good quality dog and cat food or treat.

I am tearing up thinking about this. So nice of your school to do this. I agree with Functions idea of a gift card.

If they actually have to make a pie, they would need ingredients. Since you give a turkey which is a refrigerated item, do you also give eggs, etc for the pie fixings?

My first thought too was paper napkins and I like the fold-out turkey.

A box of cookies/chocolates would be a nice touch.

Thinking back to my days as a school secretary, life for low income families is often chaotic. They move a lot, substance and domestic abuse is often an issue, the children aren't well supervised, life skills such as cooking may never have been learned and their housing may not have a working oven let alone a working kitchen. Hygiene is often neglected.

People usually give them gifts of food/clothing and other practical items, but what is lacking in many of their lives is a special treat now and then. They can't afford it and charities are trying to cover the basics necessary to live.

I think a gift of a prepared Thanksgiving meal from the local grocery store would be easier for some of the families. That along with some of the other suggestions already offered such as a box of chocolates or a game the kids can play or maybe a gift pass to the movies (depending on your budget, of course).

Also, keep in mind that transportation can also be an issue for many low income families, so you may not want to give them anything that involves long distances. If they have a car, they most likely are careful about how much gas they use. If they have to walk to the store, they will have to carry everything back to their homes. If arrangements could be made for them to pick up the baskets at the school or for the baskets to be delivered that might be really helpful.

I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but that's just how life is for so many struggling families and I think it's something to be aware of when planning such a lovely and thoughtful gesture.

Count me in as another who votes no candles.

A good heavy duty disposable roasting pan for the turkey. Kind of a bummer to get a turkey if you might not normally have a pan big enough to roast it in. Disposable for easy clean up. Maybe a turkey baster too.

I asked about the ethnicity of the recipients. All of you have great suggestions for lower income families who celebrate Thanksgiving and are not recent arrivals to the US. For low income immigrant Latino families or those of other ethnicities, turkeys, roasting pans, tablecloths, turkey decorations and family games may not be things they want or would use. As some have mentioned, a gift card for a local grocery store may be a much better approach, to allow them to choose what they want and need.

TG, I think it's very nice of you to care and to want to do more. Try to avoid not being too ethnocentric.

Why do you all think poor people can't cook? Every poor person I have known can actually cook better than most well off people I've known. I like the idea of games for the entire family to play, but then we are a game night family and not everyone is.

Kathsgrdn I agree. Where do people think the stick to your ribs peasant food that we love comes from. It's from cooking what was cheap, and avalable and turning it into something awesome. Stews, soups, casseroles, sausages, pasta, meatloaf, etc. It came from people of limited income trying to stretch a dollar to feed their family.

I remember many years of volunteering with the 3rd grade team at my kids' elementary school. We wrote one essay every year after Thanksgiving that involved welcoming their Martian friend to Thanksgiving at their house. This was a community of well off families, average income families, and some immigrants.

I was surprised to see that so few families celebrated with a Thanksgiving dinner. I am sure it was a problem with the cost of the meal but also with the effort, experience and knowledge to roast a turkey, make a pie, and understand how to prepare sweet potatoes if they even like them. So many families celebrated only by renting movies to play all day; that was it.

I'd encourage you to include easy, tasty preparation directions and recipes as well as a foil roasting pan for the turkey. Premade pie crust and a disposable pie pan would help, but I am not so sure about pumpkin pie. Perhaps include a can of pumpkin and a can of apple pie filling. Then include a recipe for both kinds of pies as well as maybe an easy pumpkin quick bread recipe as an alternative for the pumpkin. I would also include butter.

My son brought home his girlfriend for our Thanksgiving dinner. Eventually they married, and one November she flew off to another state for the birth of her sister's first baby but flew back here for our Thanksgiving dinner. I suggested to my son that she stay a few more days to enjoy the baby and have Thanksgiving with her extended family. He replied that her family does not do Thanksgiving dinner and that she LOVES our holiday meal.

It is not that poor people can not cook. For some it is deciding if they will spend their precious money on cooking something for hours or spreading that money over time for heating. While I used to love the idea of providing Thanksgiving dinners I soon found out that sometimes they presented a hardship for the receivers. Hearing people talk at work about their families being poor and receiving the baskets only to either give them away or cutting up the turkey so that it could be cooked on the top of the stove because the oven did not work or they did not have an oven made me think about how much of a hardship these baskets sometimes present to the receivers.

I have to agree with Elmer about checking out the ethnicity of the receivers especially if giving ingredients. However not all people know about seasonings beyond what they are accustomed to no matter what their ethnicity.

Wow! Thank you everyone for your suggestions so far!

Elmer- I don't actually know who the recipients are. Everything is done as discreetly as possible so as to avoid embarrassment for the families and their kids but I do know the ethnic makeup of our school is white and Hispanic. All of the children speak English though, so I don't think we have any recent immigrants.

sprtphntc7a- as far as budget, I won't know until I see how many donations come in but we usually make baskets for 12-16 families.

This is how it's been done in the past, but that doesn't mean I can't change things up.

We have a contest for the kids. This is the flyer we send home.

So we give them each a roasting pan for their turkey.

Last year we had enough in cash donations to buy the turkeys, a bag of potatoes (as well as the instant potatoes they get) a loaf of bread and they also bought each family a package of cookies and little Debbie type snacks.

I think a gift card to buy the other perishable items is a good idea, as well as games or poppers.

In the past we have only been out Wednesday-Friday but this year we will be out of school for the entire week.

We have a new theater that charges 5 dollars a person all day on Tuesdays. It's been a place all the kids have wanted to go to. Maybe I can get gift cards for the families for there?

Thanks for the ideas and please keep them coming!

This is a picture from last year showing what each family received.

Ahhh. I saw the included roasting pan mentioned above. I had been wondering whether to mention that when my cousin was a young youth ministers wife, she had been taking bags of food to a single mother going through hard times. It was weeks before she discovered the relocated family had no cookware and couldn't prepare some of it.

Movie tickets, gift cards, I like the idea of even paper table cloth and napkins to make the day really festive. But whether something for the family or just the children, keep it practical. Nobody wants a facial or pedicure when they haven't had money to buy laundry soap ;0)

That's really awesome, Texas_Gem. I was going to ask how the families are selected as info such as who qualifies for free/reduced lunches and other financial identifiers are supposed to be kept confidential by school officials, but it sounds like you have a system in place.

Having thought about this a bit further, I imagine that families who don't have a working stove or oven or don't know how to roast a turkey will figure out a way to get the food cooked whether that's taking it over to a relative's house or sharing with a neighbor who does have an oven that works.

I think sometimes we (collective we) get caught up in over thinking things like this and making them more complicated than they need to be instead of simply appreciating a wonderful gesture for what it is. The recipients will decide how the best way for them to use the baskets and do what works for their families.

That's a great deal on movie passes and would be a nice outing before all the holiday festivities begin.

With this comment I'll stop beating this dead horse but the people I've known over the years from South of the Border, mostly Mexicans but increasingly Salvadoreans, celebrate holidays with their traditional foods. Children of immigrants or who are immigrants themselves, are mostly bilingual after a year or less in an English speaking school. That they are says nothing about what goes on at home. My wife is a teacher with passable Spanish but not infrequently, parent-teacher conversations may need the child present to translate.

If your school has Hispanic/Latino (different people prefer different terms) teachers as a first choice, or classified staff as a second choice, speak with a few of them for insights on how the Hispanic community of the school may celebrate Thanksgiving. If at all. Don't be surprised to learn many don't celebrate the day as more assimilated Americans do, that's typical here.

With due respect Elmer, if they didn't celebrate and/or didn't want the food, they wouldn't sign up for and request it.

The above pictured flyer goes home to every student, they are all aware of what the food is.

WIth all due respect TG, free food of any kind to a poor family is free food. Does the flyer go out in Spanish as well as in English? (Though many Latinos living at a bare subsistence level are illiterate but someone could read it to them)

In the spirit of your saying you wanted to do something more, I had a suggestion to consider. If you don't like it, fine. Does it cost anything to ask a few people?

Since many schools (not necessarily Texas_gem's) have more than one or two ethnicities, I think it's unrealistic to try to provide a special Thanksgiving meal to each one that is made up of their more traditional foods. What if there are Vietnamese families, families from Nepal, Ethiopia, etc.? For ethnicities who may not have celebrated a "traditional" Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner, it may be an opportunity to learn and participate in something new about their new country. I would think, even if they don't stuff and cook the turkey in a "traditional" (to the majority of Americans) way, I'm sure they can use most of the food, even if it means cooking it in a more familiar way to their family.

Texas Gem had said "I do know the ethnic makeup of our school is white and Hispanic ". The discussion is about the job she kindly volunteered to do for the lower income families of kids in her kids' school.

Heart breaking and heart warming thread. Great job, Texas Gem.

I know of an organization that used to give out frozen turkeys in poor neighborhoods. They literally went door-to-door doing this, assuming that if there is no car, hauling home a big frozen turkey on the bus would be difficult. It was not well-received. Doors were slammed in their faces. They wanted a fully cooked Thanksgiving dinner. They did not want to have to cook it.

Program was discontinued as home delivery of fully cooked dinners was just not feasible.

Anglophilia, I've never gone door to door offering frozen turkeys to people who might fear the stranger giving an unsought turkey of unknown provenance, but I have gone door to door with hundreds of tomato plants to offer from my little red wagon. I ran out of plants very quickly. There was going to be work and patience involved in turning those plants into food, but everyone who accepted was delighted. No doors were slammed. I don't remember anyone being rude in any way. Yes, it was in a poor neighborhood. It was my neighborhood, though I also went beyond my block to where I did not know anyone.

From your previous posts, I understand you have lived in the same metro area as I live in. I wonder if your turkey-rejecting, cook-it-before-you-bring-it, door-slamming intended recipients were in my Missouri city.

My experiences delivering such food baskets as well as my volunteer work at such programs as the salvation army angel tree distribution center, and being acquaintances with some people who have been the beneficiaries of such programs have certainly opened my eyes to a nasty,negative picture. It's that work that has influenced my decision to not participate in or endorse such programs anymore. But,the thought itself is nice. Hopefully, this will certainly brighten SOMEONES holiday. And I think its lovely for TG to try to make it extra special.