Thanksgiving Student Business
Are you looking for a meaningful Thanksgiving project for your students?
You’re about to discover a unique activity that will not only benefit your special education students but will also help your fellow teachers!
Read on to find out how to teach special education job skills with this unique student-run Thanksgiving business!
Before we proceed to the step-by-step process, let me give you a quick overview of this business.
The main purpose of this activity is to help the teachers and other staff in your school this Thanksgiving.
We know how busy everybody is during this time, and it will be a really big help if you can take some load off their backs.
How? By doing their Thanksgiving groceries for them! They’ll simply order what they need for their Thanksgiving dinner (but it’s best if those are non-perishable goods), and then you and your students will do the shopping and delivery.
This activity is also a good community-based instruction to teach life skills like money math, grocery skills, transportation skills, and conversation skills!
In addition, this will give your students a chance to work together, which can help build their relationship.
With the Thanksgiving Groceries Purchase & Delivery Student Business, you’d be helping your students and your fellow teachers a whole lot!
Preparing for the Student Business
Now that you know how this activity can benefit your students and your school community, it’s time to start learning how it works!
First, you’ll need to do these essential preparations to make sure that your Thanksgiving grocery delivery business will run smoothly.
Step 1: Get Admin Approval
Before starting the Thanksgiving delivery activity, you must secure the approval of your school administrators. Do this even before you tell the students about your plan.
With the green light from the school, you’ll be ready to start this business. You’d be surprised how your school admin can be very supportive!
Step 2: Prepare Your Business
To ensure a smooth operation, you’ll need to prepare some essential materials. Most of these are easily done and can be printed or in digital form.
To save time, you can use a ready-made but editable bundle of the forms and flyers that you need!
If you want to create materials on. your own, here are some things you need to make before running the Thanksgiving grocery delivery business:
- Visual Directions
The most effective way to train your students in their roles for this Thanksgiving business is to use simple, step-by-step instructions.
Try having visual directions printed and ready for them to look at each time they need a reminder of the business process!
- Flyers
Create eye-catching flyers to promote your delivery service in your school. Colorful images of Thanksgiving dishes and happy faces add a friendly touch.
You can place these flyers in offices or you can send out digital copies via e-mail.
Try these FREE printable flyers!
- Order Forms
Another thing you need to prepare in advance is order forms.
You can make a form with a checklist of grocery items. This will make it easy for customers to choose what they want for their Thanksgiving meals.
- Order Master List Form
This form is a key tool for keeping track of all the orders, ensuring no one’s order is forgotten or mixed up.
Create your master list in a simple format so your students won’t have a hard time using it.
- Invoice Form
Invoices help the students keep track of the cost of items and calculate the final bill for each customer.
You can also use a copy of the invoices when calculating profits.
Step 3: Promote Your Business
Spread the word about your Thanksgiving delivery business to the whole school community!
Involve your students in this task by asking them to give out the flyers (or send flyers digitally via email).
If you have the time and resources, you can even set up a small booth in the school’s common area to answer some questions about the business.
How the Business Works
So, how does this business work? What will be the roles of your students? Here’s a step-by-step explanation.
Step 1: Collect Orders
The first task is to collect orders. Send a digital Google form to interested teachers and school staff.
As orders start rolling in, your students will diligently collect them. Remind them to be careful not to miss any details and make sure each order is just right.
Step 2: Organize Orders
After collecting all the order forms, help the students organize the order with the master list in hand.
This will make it easy to keep track of what needs to be purchased and delivered.
The students can create their shopping list for each week based on the orders at the start of the month.
Step 3: Purchase Items
Effective time management is key to running a smooth operation. When you’re done assigning roles, think of how you and your students can manage time properly. This way, you won’t get overwhelmed with tasks and you will avoid delays in orders.
You’ll want to get started in late September or early to mid October, depending on how many orders you expect to have.
To keep things manageable, focus on three orders at a time. This allows you to send groups of students to make purchases for individual teachers. Depending on the number of orders, you can make purchases and deliveries one to three times a week.
Step 4: Send Invoice
Once the list of total products to be purchased is ready, bring your students to the local supermarket.
Let them do the shopping like a fun scavenger hunt to help them practice their consumer skills.
Look for the best quality and best-priced products!
For this part, it’s good if your class has funds to use for purchasing the products. But if not, you may need to use your money first and just get it back when the orders have been paid.
Step 5: Collect Payment
Have your students visit each customer to collect the payment for the groceries. This task will help them practice their customer service and money math skills.
Remind them to be friendly and thank the customer for their support.
As for the delivery service, you may opt to work for tips instead of charging a delivery fee. You’d be surprised how many tips you will get!
In our class, this money went directly to our students. Another option is to combine all the tips to save for future community trips.
You can collect tips weekly and distribute them to the students who helped that week.
Step 6: Deliver Orders
For this part, the students will work together to make sure that each order reaches its destination. They can use a visual delivery script if needed, and work on their social skills and customer service skills as they deliver the goods!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This Thanksgiving delivery service is a great example of a student business you can do with your special education students this November.
It provides lots of opportunities for your students to learn and practice life and job skills. It’s also a chance for them to come together and finish a task with enthusiasm and determination.
Not only will this activity make Thanksgiving more special for their customers, but it will also help them gain valuable skills and experiences that will help them with their vocational goals.
Exploring what to teach your transition students, and overwhelmed by the endless ideas??
Remember that your units of focus will depend on your students’ needs; you can build your own curriculum map for the year by using this guide in conjunction with your students’ IEP goals.
You can get the Transition Roadmap Scope & Sequence here!
