Crafts
A great family activity that you can do throughout the day is to make a Thankful Turkey. You can draw a turkey face on a large piece of poster board. Just trace a large round object and color it brown. Then add eyes, a beak and a mouth using crayons, markers or craft objects like wiggle eyes and pom poms. Using red, orange and yellow construction paper, cut out large feather shapes. Ask families members throughout the day to write something they are thankful for on a feather. At dinner time have a younger family member “read” the turkey.

Another variation of this activity is the Thankful Tree. Using a piece of poster board draw a simply tree trunk and color it brown. Then provide your family members with green, yellow, orange and red papers. Ask them to trace their hand and write something they are thankful for on it. Then glue or tape the hand (leaf) to the tree trunk. You can glue them on the top or scatter on the ground like fall leaves. This looks really neat with different size hands from the youngest to the oldest in your family.

Snacks
An easy-to-make snack for kids are Snack Cornucopias. Put together some of your child’s favorite dry snacks. A few good choices are: goldfish, pretzels, Cheerios, raisins, chex cereal and mini marshmallows. Pour as much as you want into a big bowl and mix together. Then provide pointy ice cream cones (cornucopias) to scoop with. Kids and grown ups can stop by throughout the day and scoop up a yummy snack.

Another great snack is the Blessing Mix. You can prepare this in a big bowl mixed together with the saying below printed beside it, or put a little of each of the ingredients in a small clear bag to give out. You can print the saying and attach to the bag as a party snack favor.
 

Blessings Mix
Each ingredient in this snack mix symbolizes something associated with the Harvest Season (Thanksgiving)

Bugles Brand Corn Snacks - represents
a cornucopia, a horn of plenty.

Pretzels - represents arms folded in
thanks and prayer.

Candy Corn - during the first winter, the pilgrims were each allotted only 5 kernels of corn per day because food was so scarce.

Dried or Candy Fruits - Thanksgiving is the celebration of the harvest.

Peanuts and/or Sunflower Seeds - seeds represent the potential of a bounteous harvest for the next season if they are planted and well tended.
 

During Dinner
Thanksgiving dinner can be a wonderful time to catch up with family and friends. And also a long time for little people to sit at the table. Prepare a few little activities for the children so that when they finish dinner, they can stay at the table and complete them. You can look up “Thanksgiving coloring sheets” online and also use www.puzzlemaker.com. This website allows you to make any type of word puzzle or search using words of your choice. You can make a crossword puzzle using all the names and locations of people in your family. Or you can make a word search with Thanksgiving words like: pilgrims, Indians, turkeys, feast...

Clean up after Thanksgiving dinner can take almost as long as dinner did! Plan a few fun after dinner activities for the kids to keep the fun going. A scavenger hunt is always a hit for children of all ages. You can have them make teams based on how many children you have present. Then develop a list of items that you want to hide. Look through your local craft or dollar stores to get some seasonal ideas. You can simply hide individually wrapped smarties or Starburst candies. Have each team find as many as they can. Or draw a map and have them work together to find the treasure. There are many variations of scavenger hunts you can do depending on how much time and energy you want to put into it. A good old fashion game of flashlight tag (tag someone with the flashlight beam and they are out) or hide and seek is also fun to do outside.

Spending time with loved ones is always a special time. Plan a few of these fun ideas to make the most of your time together.