5 Thanksgiving Activities for the Family

Thanksgiving activities are a perfect way to spend time with your family, have mindful moments, design crafts, and create long-lasting memories. Remember to take pictures and put them in a family album! We have five different Thanksgiving activities that are perfect to pick and choose what works for your family. Plus, download our free Thanksgiving concentration game activity below.

At my house, we love Thanksgiving because it is the perfect time to take a break and spend some time with the family. I’ll be spending my time with my kids, grandkids, and husband. This year we’ll be celebrating at our house. My children and 3 grandchildren will be here. I’m so excited! We are getting ready with some simple Thanksgiving activities that will get both the kids and adults engaged in a great time. That makes for a happy mom and grandmom!

Family Thanksgiving Activities

1. Family Hike, Leaf Collecting, and Rubbing Thanksgiving Activity

Take a family walk or hike and collect the leaves that have fallen. When you get home, you can use them for table decorations. First, sort them according to shape, size, and color. Then you can pick the perfect leaves or arrangements. You can also make placemats from them by doing leaf rubbings with colored pencils or crayons.

1. Place one leaf at a time under a blank sheet of paper. If you want to use them as placemats, get some 11×17 sized paper.
2. Rub the top of the paper with colored crayons or pencils. They will pick up the design and shape of the leaf.
3. Move the leaf, repeat and try different leaves.
4. Outline each leaf rubbing with a marker or pen so that each individual leaf stands out.
5. Put names on the placemat and then you can use them for each family member at breakfast, lunch or dinner.

2. Thanksgiving Concentration Game (Memory Matching)

Play Concentration with the following pages. The ones with 6 pictures per page are for younger kids. Those with 12 on a page are for older kids.

Game Rules

To set up a game of concentration, print out the pages and cut up the pictures. Then, mix the pictures up and place each picture face down in a grid. Each player takes a turn by turning two cards over. If the cards match, then the player picks up the cards and keeps them. If they don’t match, the player turns the cards back over. Younger students can play with 4 to 5 matches. Older kids can play with 10 to 15 matches. You can start with a smaller number of cards face down at first and work your way up. This is a nice quick game to help build memory skills.

3. Thanksgiving Reading or Movie Activity

Read a Thanksgiving book or watch a Thanksgiving movie with the family. Then use one of the graphic organizers from Ten Minutes to Better Writing and Study Skills and chart out the who, what, where, when, why, and how for each character in the story. Decide who was your favorite character and who was your least favorite character and why. This will improve memory and comprehension skills.

4. Thanksgiving Acronym Activity

Using the word Thanksgiving, come up with what each letter stands for.

5. Thankful Moment Activity

This might already be part of your family tradition, but before you eat, go around the table and have everyone say one or two things they are thankful for. There is more and more research about how gratitude can greatly benefit our psyche. “Expressing thanks may be one of the simplest ways to feel better.” Take a look at the article Expressing Gratitude Can Benefit Your Health and the Counting Blessings vs Burdens Study from the University of California, Davis, and the University of Miami about how expressing thanks can help people have a more optimistic view on life.

From all of us at Bonnie Terry Learning and Scholar Within, we wish you a great Thanksgiving!