Thankful for our Time Together: Fun November Activities

November is a time of thanksgiving and looking back on your life and seeing what you are thankful for.  One of the greatest things I am most thankful for is my family.  Of course we have our fair share of challenges, but when all is said and done they are the most important people in my life. I am thankful for my mom's effort in getting the family together to do things together. She is an elementary school teacher, so many times she would do little games or activities with us that she had done with her school kids. Here are some fun ideas she shared with me:

 Don't Eat the Turkey

Photo Credit

Instructions:

Make your own or use one like the image above as your game board.  Put one item (usually something you can eat like marshmallows, M&Ms, raisins, etc.) on each square.  Someone will either leave the room or close their eyes while everyone else chooses one of the turkey pictures.  When the person returns or uncovers their eyes, they start picking up the items from each turkey picture until they go to pick up the one from the picture you had chosen.  When they go to pick that one up you all say, "Don't Eat the Turkey!" and their turn is over.  They get to keep and eat all the ones they had picked up to that point.    

Disguise the Turkey

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Instructions:

Find a picture of a turkey or draw one using your hand as an outline (the thumb becomes the head of the turkey and the rest of the fingers are the feathers).  The point of this activity is to disguise the turkey so he won't get eaten on Thanksgiving Day.  You can decorate it together, or each make one yourself.  You can either use crayons or markers to color, or cut out pieces of paper and glue them on. Make it as simple or complex as you'd like. Then you can hang them up on the fridge or around the house as fun reminders of your time together.

"Orange" Pumpkin

This is just a fun healthy little snack to make together.

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Ingredients:

Mandarin or clementine oranges

Celery sticks (cut into strips-about 1 1/2-2 inches long)

You'll need as many celery sticks as oranges you have

Directions:

Peel the oranges and then put the celery stick in the middle of the orange to make it look like a pumpkin with a stem.  You can just eat them, use them as little decorations, or even make it into an activity where you have to say something you're grateful for before you can eat each orange slice. 

These are just some fun ideas you can do with your kids. You can alter them as needed. The point is to have fun this Thanksgiving season with quality time spent together that they will remember.