Holidays and Events

Posts Tagged ‘Thanksgiving games’

Have you recently made the decision to host a Thanksgiving party in your home? If so, there is a good chance that you may have already started the planning process. If so, have you decided on a form on party entertainment yet?

Even if you have started planning your Thanksgiving party, there is a good chance that you have yet to get to the entertainment. This is because entertainment is often one of the last things that a party host plans. Well, if it is time for you to start thinking about your Thanksgiving party entertainment, you will find that you, literally, have an unlimited number of options.

When it comes to deciding on party entertainment, it is important to keep the type of party that you are hosting in mind. For instance, are you having a formal Thanksgiving Dinner or a causal Thanksgiving party?

Also, what does your guest list look like? Are you having a Thanksgiving party for kids, one for adults, or a party where everyone is invited? The type party that you will be having is extremely important, when it comes to choosing entertainment for the event.

Regardless of what type of Thanksgiving party you are having, you may enjoy having music played. The type of get-together you are planning will have an impact on the type of music that you choose.

If you are having a formal dinner, classical music may do. For a causal Thanksgiving party, music that your guests can get up and dancing to may be the perfect form of entertainment. It is always a good idea to tailor your selection to match your Thanksgiving party.

Party games are another popular form of entertainment that may be ideal for your Thanksgiving event. If you are hosting a kid only Thanksgiving party, it is almost guaranteed that games will be a hit. For adult parties, adult themed games are also popular.

Party games, particularly those that are causal in nature, may not fit in with a formal Thanksgiving Dinner. That does not mean that you cannot incorporate party games into a formal Thanksgiving party, it just means that you want to find games that will fit in with your party theme. You can easily find a wide array of Thanksgiving party game ideas online, often with a standard internet search.

While you might not necessarily consider eating a form of entertainment, it could easily be considered one. If you are planning a casual Thanksgiving party, it may be ideal to have a wide array of snacks on hand, particularly if children will be present at your party.

For a formal Thanksgiving party, a full fledge Thanksgiving dinner may be the perfect choice. It is also advised that you try and tailor your selection of food and snacks to your party style. For instance, if you are hosting a formal Thanksgiving party, it may be a good idea to have elegant dishes prepared for the dinner and for the snacks.

As you can easily see, there are a number of different forms of entertainment that you can offer at your next Thanksgiving party. Regardless of which type of party you plan on hosting, you can easily take steps to ensure that your party guests have a fun, exciting, and memorable time.

If you’re planning a Thanksgiving party in the classroom, there are a myriad of games you can have the children play that will be fun but also educational and useful in teaching the concept of being thankful.

Be careful not to overdo the turkey aspect of Thanksgiving. Some children forget that it’s about more than the turkey. Playing some fun games can help them remember the purpose of Thanksgiving.

Try a gratitude bag. Fill the bag with several cards, each with something on it. Some will say “Thanksgiving” while others will have a word or picture of other things. Some of those other things might be cars, food, clothes, etc. Have the children sit in a circle and draw a card out of the bag. If they get a card that has a picture or word on it other than “Thanksgiving” they should talk about why they are thankful for that item and why others should be as well.

For example, if the child choose “shoes”, they might express how thankful they are that they have shoes so their feet stay clean and they don’t get cold in the winter and they stay unharmed when they are walking. Depending on the ages of the children, this might be a simple response or something a little more involved once they understand the concept better.

If they draw the “car” card, they might comment on how nice it is to have a car and not have to take the bus, or how nice it is that their mom can pick them up from school so they don’t have to walk home everyday. With help from the teacher or a parent, they might even note that in many parts of the world, people don’t have cars (or shoes) and that they are lucky to have all these things.

If the child chooses a card that says “Thanksgiving” they should come up with an original idea about something they are thankful for. Try to steer them away from things like “Playstation” but instead steer them toward things like “my parents” and “my house and my room”.

For some thinking fun, have kids do a word find with Thanksgiving words. Provide them with a list of words related to Thanksgiving. They might be “Thanksgiving”, “Cornucopia”, “Mayflower”, “Turkey”, etc. Then they must find words contained in those words.

So, if the word is “Mayflower”, they might find words like “lay”, “flower”, “flow” and the like. “Thanksgiving” might turn into “thank”, “sing”, and “an”. See which child can find the most words in the list of words you provide them. Try to challenge the kids to find words within the words that relate back to Thanksgiving.

The old memory game is always fun and can be used for Thanksgiving too. Have the children sit in a circle and have someone start the game by saying, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat” and then finish it with one food item. So that child might say, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey”, and the next child will say, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey and cranberry sauce.” The next child would continue with, “At Thanksgiving, I like to eat turkey and cranberry sauce and green beans.”

Each child will carry on until the list becomes so long, someone is sure to forget an item. You can either start the game over or keep going until everyone is out but one child.

If you’re hosting a family Thanksgiving, you  will want to create a fun environment that will help children understand the importance of thankfulness and send a gentle reminder to the adults of  this as well.

Since Thanksgiving comes just before what many refer to as the “greedy” season, activities designed to remind people of the bounty in their lives are useful. For example, you might help children understand that while they don’t have everything they want, they do have everything they need.

There are several ways to do this.

First, help the children create a cornucopia centerpiece, which will sit on the Thanksgiving table.  One way of doing this would be to make a papier-mâché cornucopia using a balloon as the base to help you get the shape started.  Alternately, you could simply take large piece of poster board and shape it into a cone and fill it with whatever you like. As an extra activity, the  children can decorate the cornucopia before it is filled.

Since the idea of the cornucopia is to celebrate a abundance and appreciate that bounty, you can fill it as is traditionally done with squash, corn and the like. You might ask each member of the family to bring something that represents their personal bounty in life.

A new mom might bring a baby blanket to put in the cornucopia while a newly retired grandpa might add a picture of his family, since that’s what’s most important to him. You can discuss the items in the cornucopia basket at the dinner table while enjoying your Thanksgiving feast.

Another family activity that kids like is the thankfulness jar. When each person arrives at dinner, they place a note with something they are thankful for in the jar. Ideally, each person will add more than one item to the jar.  At dinner, someone (ideally, the matriarch of patriarch of the family) reads the notes. Everyone tries to figure out who wrote which note.

The items can range from the serious (someone who struggled with an illness in the previous year might be thankful for life, quite simply) to the silly (the new mom might be thankful there’s a Starbucks within 5 minutes of her home). Kids enjoy adding their own touches to the thankfulness jar and their responses are often a surprise to the adult family members.

Some families have several tables set about at Thanksgiving. Many people buy professional floral arrangements to decorate the tables. You can make a game out of it to figure out who’s going to get to bring home the table arrangement to their home.

You can do the old wedding thing and simply put a number on the bottom of the centerpiece and have someone’s chair match that number or you can make a game and perhaps create a trivia game out of Thanksgiving facts. For example, questions might look like this:
*How many turkeys are cooked on Thanksgiving throughout the US?
*Why are turkeys called turkeys?
*Which president set aside the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving?

Be sure you research and know the answers and then quiz everyone. This is a great way to pass the time while everyone is waiting for the feast to be ready. Just tell the winners they can’t take the centerpieces until dinner is over!

A similar game can be played before dessert. Create a family trivia game and quiz family members before dessert. Only those guests who answer correctly  get to have their dessert. Everyone else has to keep trying until they get their trivia question correct.

Questions can range from the silly to the sublime. They might look something like this:
*Who got popcorn stuck in her braces at 12?
*Which man here wore boots with big holes in them until he was 20 and could buy his own?
*Whose grandparents immigrated to the US from Ireland?
*Which boy here got suspended from school for riding his bike into the classroom?