Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. I was a picky eater growing up, so my love of the holiday had more to do with the traditions and the family time than the food. My mom loves to entertain, so Thanksgiving dinner has always been a big deal. To this day, certain smells in the kitchen remind me of all the preparations my parents make leading up to the meal. Today, I decided to gather some family activities that you can do on the night before Thanksgiving!

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The Night Before Thanksgiving was written by Natasha Wing and illustrated by Tammie Lyon. It tells the story of a family preparing for Thanksgiving Day. As the parents prepare the food, the kids help to get the home ready. When the holiday arrives, they spend the day enjoying delicious food and fun games with their family. This is a great rhyming read aloud to get kids excited for all of the traditions of Thanksgiving! There are many activities that you can easily do with this book to further the learning and get your family ready for turkey day!

Pumpkin Pie Play Dough

The blog The Primary Pack posted a great recipe for play dough in four delicious fall scents. This offers a great sensory experience for kids and can lead to some great dramatic play! Whip up a batch of this play dough and pretend to make pumpkin pies or other treats along with the book. I made the pumpkin pie dough and it was super easy and smelled delicious! The recipe uses flour, salt, oil, cream of tartar and water, and it is ready to play with very quickly! My daughter loved playing with the dough and I liked that the dough had safe ingredients, so when she inevitably put her hands into her mouth, I didn’t have to worry! We will definitely be trying some of the other scents.

Our pumpkin pie play dough

Make a Pie

The mother in the book is preparing pies for the big Thanksgiving feast. Why not create some family memories by getting into the kitchen and making pie together! Whether you have an old family recipe to pass down, or want to find a new adventurous pie to add to the recipe box, this can be a great way to build tradition into your holidays!

Pumpkin Hunt

I have to give credit to my 17-month old for this idea. I have a group of small pumpkins on her drawing table to give her the ability to play with them and explore them. She loves to pick them up and play with them. However, I recently noticed them disappearing from the table. She has been hiding them on herself and then “finding” them. This is such a simple game, but can be a great boredom buster for kids stuck inside as the weather starts to turn colder! All you need is a few small pumpkins and you can keep kids young and old busy for hours! This not only provides them with the ability to use their brains to find the pumpkin, but gets them up and moving as they search the house!

Related Post: 15 Children’s Books about Pumpkins

Hunting for her pumpkin (which she hid on herself)

Setting the Table

The kids in the story help their parents to prepare for Thanksgiving by helping to set up the table. This provides parents with a great opportunity to teach kids about helping with dinner and setting the table. Teach kids about the proper placement of utensils, or look them up together if you are a little rusty! If you have a very fancy table for your dinner and don’t want the kids to help, you could let them take control of setting the kid’s table, or let them set out place cards. For very young children, you could let them paint place cards for the table that you can write names on. All of these activities allow the kids to help you, while giving them pride that they are part of the preparations.

Turkey Races

Since the turkey flies through the air in the story, why not fly some turkeys around your house while teaching kids some science? The blog Growing a Jeweled Rose created these fun turkey races to teach her kids about actions and reactions, and items being propelled by force. She created fun turkey shapes out of craft foam, feathers and eyes, and attached them to balloons (blown up, but not tied). She attached the balloons to straws, laced a long string through each straw, and tied the string ends between two chairs. When her kids let go of their balloons, they got to watch the turkeys fly across the strings! This is a simple science activity that will bring so much joy and laughter to kids!

Related Post: Plump and Perky Turkey Fun

There are so many fun and delicious traditions around the night before Thanksgiving and the day itself! I can’t wait to add this story to our yearly traditions. Do you have any family traditions for the night before Thanksgiving?

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