Are you looking for some Thanksgiving activities to do with your kids this November? Click through to see what we’re doing plus an offer for an Autumn Thanksgiving planner plus free printables for your kids!
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Why Thanksgiving Activities are Needed
In recent years we’ve been more comfortable celebrating Thanksgiving at home and have realized we need some ideas of things to do with the kids at home!
Also, since our kids do online school there is a lot of time for us to work on crafts and other Thanksgiving ideas throughout the week. I wanted to share these activities with you too in case you are looking for some ideas for your kids!
Table of Contents
Thanksgiving Crafts
There are many great Thanksgiving crafts you can work on with your kids including making handprint turkeys with tempura or acrylic paint on paper or a paper plate. It’s always fun to make fingerpaint turkeys or turkeys out of paper.
The Large Turkey below was made mainly by my husband who cut out the body of the turkey then did an accordion fold to the pieces of paper for the plumage. He used 3 pieces of paper for each color and taped them together. The turkey is glued to two popsicle sticks on the bottom starting at the feet and going toward the back.
- Three sheets of each color of construction paper for the plumage. We used brown, yellow, and orange.
- Accordion fold each piece of paper with about 1″ folds.
- Keep the brown paper, which will be in the back, as the biggest piece.
- Cut an inch off of the yellow paper so it’ll be down lower than the brown.
- Cut two inches total off of the orange paper so it will be lower than the yellow.
- Tape the pieces of folded paper together in a fan shape then
On the right, the turkey on the left is my eldest’s and is made out of a brown circle and brown oval plus some googly eyes, triangle for the beak, red gobbler, and little feet. He decided to use pompoms to decorate the turkey.
The other two turkeys are hand turkeys where we traced our twins’ hands and then cut out different colors of paper with their handprint. It was really fun to do these with the kids.
- Gather pieces of construction paper one of each: yellow, orange, brown, red, and green (or any color you’d like).
- Trace your child’s right hand on each page of construction paper.
- Cut out the construction paper hands.
- Glue them together, slightly offsetting them to make the plumage look full and colorful.
- Add googly eyes or whatever else your children want on their turkeys.
- Be sure to add their name and the year on the back.
Thankful Thanksgiving Activities
The classic going around the table and talking about what you’re thankful for is always a hit as the kids get older. Two years ago we made a thankful tree where we each said what we were thankful for on a leaf and then put it on the little tree. At that time I did all the writing but this year I am going to try to convince them to do some writing!
It was cute to see what they were thankful for and I’m thinking it’s something we should do every year to see how it changes. Below is a printable you can download for free if you’d like to do a Thankful tree with your kids!
Books about Thanksgiving
We love talking about being Thankful with our children and reminding them how lucky we are. Here are some of our favorite books about being Thankful and Thanksgiving.
The Berenstain Bears Thanksgiving Blessings is a sweet story about Thanksgiving and how to be thankful for all that God blesses us with.
Do you have Llama Llama fans in your house? We do! It doesn’t hurt that we have a llama farm about two miles from us that we’ve visited a few times over the years. Llama Llama Gives Thanks is a cute book about having fun playing in the leaves and remembering to give thanks for all that we have.
As you may know from some of my other blog posts, we are big fans of Daniel Tiger in our home. The Daniel Tiger book Thank You Day is such a sweet book with a great story of being Thankful for everyone around you and ensuring you tell them.
Thanksgiving Coloring & Sticker Activities Books
I created a 6-page coloring and activity bundle you can download for free and print out or complete on your tablet if you fill out the form below!
We bought some Thanksgiving coloring books and sticker books a while back that we bring out every year that the kids enjoy. They tend to just work on a handful of pages every year which kind of works out. Haha!
Not sure about your kids but mine LOVE playing Would You Rather? and this Gobble Gobble Edition is so cute and funny!
Our kids also love playing I Spy, and this book is perfect. Not only do kids get to play I Spy but learn while doing it!
Thanksgiving Day Parades
We enjoy watching the Thanksgiving Day parades on TV on Thanksgiving morning!
Here is a link to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I honestly had never looked it up online but they have a pretty cool website for it!
There is also a great Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia! Turns out it’s been going on even longer than the Macy’s parade! We happened to come across this one on TV one year when we were channel flipping and ended up switching between the Macy’s parade and the Philly one whenever commercials were on.
Allergen-Friendly Thanksgiving Food
Though we are just cooking for the 5 of us, we do enjoy cooking a 12-15 pound turkey (and freezing a lot for leftovers), mashed potatoes, vegetables, a relish tray, and cranberry sauce. Plus of course some pie! All of which we make allergen friendly so the whole family can eat everything.
Here are the recipes we use:
- Daiya Vegan Mashed Potatoes
- Roast Turkey
- Gluten Free Thanksgiving Stuffing
- Homemade Cranberry Sauce
- Gluten Free Dutch Apple Pie
- Gluten Free Pumpkin Pie
Thanksgiving Planner and Guided Journal
I created a Thanksgiving planner that will take all the guesswork out of planning your Thanksgiving. Complete with daily, monthly, and weekly planner pages, goals, reminders, bucket lists, Thanksgiving budget, shopping list, chores, etc. it’s got you covered! You can purchase it from my online store and download it to your computer immediately! You can use it digitally or print it out.
I know kids tend to get antsy when the adults are chatting so I made the Thanksgiving Coloring Book. With 17 pages to color and 1 page of stickers that you can print out on sticker paper and cut out, they’ll be busy for a while! You can print a copy for each kid coming to Thanksgiving or they can pick and choose what they want to color. (See the coloring books above)
More Holiday Celebrations at Home
Here is a post I wrote about the things we do for all holidays to make them special since we’ve been stuck at home. As we keep adding years and activities to this I plan on writing a blog post for each big holiday but we’ll see. Lol
As a mom of identical twins and a son two years older, I have gained invaluable experience in the realm, and chaos, of parenting. With a Master's Degree and Education Specialist Degree in School Psychology, I spent years as a school psychologist, helping children navigate through their educational and emotional challenges. Now as a stay at home mom and professional blogger, I combine my areas of expertise to help you in your parenting journey.