Moorestown Friends School's student body and faculty spent the day before Thanksgiving gathered together, preparing holiday decorations and crafts—paper bag turkeys, tissue paper flowers, leaf wreaths etc.—for the school's 19th annual Thanksgiving Happening.

The decor was to be displayed briefly at the school, then taken to area nursing homes.

Lynne Brick, one of the organizers of the Happening, said one of the themes of the day was community building. The school mixed the students up, bringing Lower School students into the Upper School, and Upper School students into the Lower School, and so on and so forth.

The children were clearly having a great time with their arts and crafts Wednesday and co-organizer Priscilla Taylor-Williams said, "That should be part of your sense of community—you're having fun."

The other value the school tried to instill is, of course, gratitude, in keeping with the spirit of the holiday. To that end, the school collected full Thanksgiving dinners and donated them to New Visions Community Center in Camden for delivery to needy families. Brick said the students collected 164 full dinners this year, as well as $950 for turkeys.

"They're all very good at it, recognizing they have things (to be thankful for)," said Taylor-Williams. 

And "by doing the food (drive), they're connected to their broader community," said Brick.