Maggie's Farm

This from Canada, where we celebrate a month earlier because winter tends to hit mid-October.

Back in the day, one of our offsprings was head of the "preschool" class at our Sunday School. Said offspring had developed a food-based curriculum for the class, but the speciality was Thanksgiving Sunday when the class would make pumpkin pies to share with their families. The recipe was simple: the pastry was made
chez nous the day before (following a recipe which - many years before, my mother had been given by the sister of the owner of the local hair salon) and which we contributed, along with the aluminum pie plates. The students were each handed a ball of pastry and - helped by volunteers (often older sibs) - rolled said ball out into a reasonable semblance of a pastry shell and placed into the aluminum pie plates. Then the filling was dispensed: each child was give a ziploc baggie and into it was dispensed the requisite amounts of pumpkin puree and spices. The children got to really mush up the ingredients and then a corner was cut so the filling could dribble into the pastry shell. Almonds were placed on the top to identify each pie. Into the church oven they went, and they were carried proudly home by the pre-schoolers as their contribution to Thanksgiving dinner.

The kids were really pleased to be able to contribute to the Thanksgiving dinner; it's not always a three-year-old can make a substantive contribution to a family celebation.