Keep Kids Entertained on Thanksgiving Day

Whether you are traveling out of town for Thanksgiving or spending the day closer to home, chances are you'll need to get the kids out of your hair at some point. Maybe you need time to cook, concentrate on the road, or just enjoy the game. Here are some excellent resources to keep kids busy all day.

Meaningful Crafts

As a kid I spent many a Thanksgiving day with a paper plate, some crayons, and my hand. I loved those four feathered turkeys, but we've come a long way since then. I love this simple idea for creating a Book of Thanks. You can tailor this any way you like. For example, you could let kids cut pictures out of magazines, draw, or make pages of thanks from pantry items like pasta and beans. Have children choose one or two of their pages to share at the Thanksgiving table to get the thankful feelings flowing.

I also love the idea of creating a paper chain of thanks that can be added to throughout the holidays. Why not take it a step further and buy paper in colors to coordinate with kids' rooms and have them create a chain they can work on all year? The value of gratitude deserves more attention than it gets!

Help Kids Make Christmas Gifts

All Free Crafts is an excellent resource for all things frugal and crafty. There instructions for all kinds of homemade crafts can be used to help kids with Christmas gift giving. Set up a production line in a room other than the kitchen to make these lovely soups in a jar. This is the kind of gift everyone can use and kids will love measuring and filling the jars with the colorful ingredients.

Teach the Meaning

Record a movie, read a story, or just Google Thanksgiving to find a wealth of historical information about the holiday. For example, Pilgrim Hall Museum has uploaded the text of a first hand account of the original Thanksgiving, detailed in a letter from a Plymouth resident in 1621. Do you know about the Godmother of Thanksgiving? Her name was Sarah Josepha Hale, who also happens to be the author of the nursery poem Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Free Printables and Arcade Games

Free-ColoringPages.com has a pretty large selection of easy to medium Thanksgiving coloring pages that are free for the printing.

While you're there, don't forget to check out the other free fun like learning games, puzzles, and the arcade games. They have classics like PacMan and Space Invaders right there for the playing on your home computer. These high tech games of the past go a long way toward entertaining adults too! Who needs a Wii?

More Thanksgiving Fun:

Kid-Friendly Vegetable Recipes for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Prayers and Other Expressions of Gratitude for Children

Best Thanksgiving Books For Kids