Thousands of people mobbed stores to get their hands on cheap Black Friday merchandise today, with one shopper in L.A. even pepper-spraying other people to get to the goods first. Does that mean Americans are insane? Yes!

But the students at the private Calhoun School (with locations on 74th Street and on West End Avenue and 81st), have been working on projects meant to question that mentality.

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving, students at Calhoun work on a socially conscious Harvest Festival project to benefit people in the community. This year, the theme was “Too Much Stuff” and students learned about issues like the farm to table movement and where our garbage ends up. They also asked questions like “What is ‘Made in America?’ Does it matter?”

“Harvest Festival projects frequently involve craft activities (homemade cards, toys, jewelry, reusable shopping bags which are donated to local hospitals, senior centers or hospitalized children); letter-writing to government officials in support of legislation; food pantry collections, etc,” Alison Bennett of Calhoun told me.

Check out some images from the project, and a video about farm to table below.

“Too Much Stuff” cake.

Student answers the question “Why buy?” with another question: “Do I really need this?”

74th St. students created a “reuseum” out of recycled and found materials.

Images via Calhoun’s twitter feed.