Six DIY Thanksgiving Games To Make (And Play!) With Your Family

Thanksgiving is all about family, and giving thanks for a plentiful harvest. In today’s society, we are so blessed and live such full lives compared to those who first celebrated this sacred season. Because of this, it’s important to focus on our loved ones during this time of year. If you’re tired of watching football or playing on the computer, Thanksgiving is the perfect time to engage in fun activities with your children. These activities are cheap and easy to set up, so you won’t need to worry about cost or preparation.

Here are ten DIY Thanksgiving games to make (and play) with your family:

Turkey Bowling

This is a Thanksgiving game that promises to bring a lot of laughs to the entire family. Can you imagine your parents or grandparents trying this out? It’s so simple to arrange, too. All you need are some mini pumpkins, disposable cups, and decor of your choice to decorate the turkey face. You can get as creative as you like when making the turkeys by using googly eyes and colored paper. This hilarious idea came from ‘The Seasoned Mom’, a website maintained by a real-life mom who needed to bring calm to her busy life as the mother of three boys.

Tip: A tennis ball or other type of ball will work just as well as mini pumpkins!

Autumn Tic Tac Toe

We are all familiar with the traditional game of tic tac toe, but the site ‘its overflowing’ puts a Thanksgiving spin on things. Those mini pumpkins will be useful again, because they act as the tic tac toe pieces. All you have to do is make a grid of squares using washi tape, and then divide white and orange mini pumpkins to act as the opposing pieces. Simple and cheap, this will keep your kids entertained for hours.

Stuff the Turkey

Before you panic, this is not stuffing the real turkey. We love our kids, but it’s not recommended to let a toddler take control over Thanksgiving dinner! No, no! Instead, this is a game where the family can all have fun by stuffing a handmade turkey. Melissa from ‘Kid friendly Things To Do’ tells us how to make the turkey, as well as the stuffing pieces.

The key item you need for this game is lots of different types of paper: brown paper bags for the turkey, and different colored standard paper for the stuffing ingredients. The site’s instructions includes celery, onion, and bread as stuffing fillers, but you can really feed the kid’s imaginations by making mini herbs out of paper. Stacks of paper and a hot glue gun are pretty much all you need for this creation.

Pumpkin Twister

This is a game where all the family can get involved, and usually end up falling over one another! This is a Thanksgiving twist of the traditional Twister game.‘Pint sized treasures’ shows you how to make this game from scratch, and they will help you save precious time by providing a free printable board. All you need for this game is a computer and a printer, as well as things you usually keep in your cabinet like glue and markers. You basically find large printouts of different colored pumpkins to correspond with the printable, stick them onto the twister board (this can be a large sheet or many small sheets taped together), and entertain your loved ones for the entire evening.

Fingerprint Tree

This activity is lots of fun, but will also create wonderful memories for the grandparents of the family. While the turkey is cooking, get all the kids around, have some paints and decorations ready on the table, and get them to put their fingerprint on a tree. The tree itself can be printed out or drawn by hand, depending on how artistic you are. This activity will get the kids enthusiastic about family keepsakes, and the grandparents will love nothing more than looking at the collection of fingerprints for years to come.

Thankful For ABCs

Keeping up with the spirit of gratitude that defines Thanksgiving, sitting around as a family as filling in things you’re thankful for will really make you realize how blessed you are. Finding something you’re thankful for for every letter of the alphabet means that this season you have twenty six great things happening in your life. This family activity is a great DIY idea, and so easy to do. You don’t have to follow strict instructions or anything; you just have to print out a list with a ‘Thankful For’ heading and then write each letter with a space beside it. This is the perfect way to spend the Thanksgiving season, and ‘Written Reality’ has a free printout of the thankful list so all you have to do is hit the print button!