Thanksgiving Printables for the Table

If you’ve got a bunch of kids (or even just a couple of kids) coming over for Thanksgiving, you might need some things to entertain them while they wait for the food to be ready. These Thanksgiving printables are great to use at the table or whenever you need something to fill a little time, and honestly adults will like some of these, too.

Activity placemats are a classic for kids, and they’re great to have on hand for Thanksgiving if there’s a lull between courses or while kids wait for food to get passed to them.

Crafting a Lovely Life has a few different options including a coloring sheet and one for writing what you’re thankful for, but my favorite includes a space to draw your dinner, a word search, word scramble and game grids for tic-tac-toe.

Artsy Fartsy Mom has one with a turkey to color, a word search, a place to write what you are thankful for and some tic-tac-toe spaces as well.

And Skip to My Lou has a few different printable Thanksgiving placemat activity sheets. The one that caught my eye includes an I-spy, a color by number and other things to color, words to unscramble and more that’s sure to keep kiddos occupied.

If you like word games, try the Thanksgiving Mad Libs from Jac of All Things, or this Finish the Phrase game from The Crafting Chicks (one person decides what the answers are and everyone else tries to guess what they picked). Both kids and adults can challenge themselves to come up with something they are thankful for from A to Z with this printable from PJs and Paint.

Don’t miss the printable Thanksgiving jokes from Kristin Duke Photography. A sample: Why did they let the turkey join the band? Because he had the drumsticks!

Play Thanksgiving Bingo with the printable cards from One Creative Mommy, or try a Thanksgiving I Spy from The Best Ideas for Kids.

20 STEAM Educational Gift Ideas For Kids

Christmas STEAM Activities for Kids

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

Have you read?

Leave a Reply