15 Fun, Family-Friendly Activities To Add More Meaning to Thanksgiving
Between cooking and cleaning, airport pick-ups, and last-minute runs to the store, kids can get lost in the hustle and bustle of Thanksgiving Day! Since Thanksgiving is meant to celebrate family, friends, and all of the other people and things we’re grateful for, we’ve pulled together some fun ways to involve kids in Thanksgiving prep! This Thanksgiving, let your kids:Help in the Kitchen! Holiday cooking can be more fun with kids! Pull a chair to the sink or counter and let your kids help prepare your Thanksgiving Day feast. Depending on their age, kids can:
- Wash fruits and veggies in a colander
- Snap the ends off of green beans
- Peel potatoes and carrots
- Mash potatoes
- Roll out pie crust
- Glitter leaves table runner—Send the kids out to collect fall leaves of all sizes. Brush one side of a leaf with Elmer’s glue and place it, glue side down, in a tray of glitter. Glue the leaves, glitter-side-up, to a festive, fall-colored ribbon and snake it across your Thanksgiving table.
- Turkey place cards—Kids trace their hands on construction paper and decorate them like turkeys with markers, glue-on feathers, and googly eyes. Cut them out,write the name of someone attending your Thanksgiving meal in the center, and you’ve got the perfect place cards!
- Paper bag Pilgrims centerpiece—Provide paper lunch bags, construction paper shapes (rectangles, squares, circles, triangles), glue, and markers—and let your kids decorate their bags like Pilgrims! (Don’t forget the ubiquitous cockel hat!)
- Put napkins in napkin rings and set them on the table.
- Place silverware with the help of this simple rhyme: The fork’s all alone on the left side of the plate. The knife stops the spoon from meeting his date!
- Place glasses and bread plates. Have your kids make the “okay” sign with both hands and show them that the left hand makes the letter “b”, so the bread plate sits to the left of the dinner plate; the right hand makes the letter “d”, so that’s where the drinks go!
- Play board games—Stock games for all ages, like The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game™ for preschoolers, Crowded Waters™ for strategy-game lovers, and Blurt!® Sports for the Thanksgiving Day football fans!
- Put on a puppet show – Big kids can direct a performance of the Thanksgiving story using the paper bag Pilgrims they’ve created, sock puppets, or even our Puppet-on-a-Stick™!