The leisurely pace of Turkey Day can be challenging for small celebrants. Keep spirits high with this fun games.
Chopstick Pass-Along
What you'll need
How to play:
Give each player a set of chopsticks and place an unshelled walnut, an acorn, a cranberry, and a pea on a small plate next to the oldest player. She begins by using the chopsticks to pass each object, from largest to smallest, to the person on her right, who receives it with chopsticks and passes it along to the next player. The object is to try to get all four objects back to the starting plate without dropping any of them. Players unable to manage the chopsticks can use a teaspoon instead.
What you'll need
- Chopsticks
- Unshelled walnut
- Acorn
- Cranberry
- Pea
- Small plate
How to play:
Give each player a set of chopsticks and place an unshelled walnut, an acorn, a cranberry, and a pea on a small plate next to the oldest player. She begins by using the chopsticks to pass each object, from largest to smallest, to the person on her right, who receives it with chopsticks and passes it along to the next player. The object is to try to get all four objects back to the starting plate without dropping any of them. Players unable to manage the chopsticks can use a teaspoon instead.
Wall Football
What you'll need
How to play
What you'll need
- Poster board
- Brown card stock
- White opaque paint marker
- Poster tacks
- Blindfold
How to play
- For the game pieces, first create a goal post from two-inch-wide strips of poster board. (The uprights and the crossbar are each 20 inches long, and the post is 6 inches tall.) We attached ours to the wall using poster tack.
- For the footballs, cut 5-inch-long shapes out of brown card stock. We found some in the scrapbook aisle of our craft store that looks like football leather. Use a white opaque paint marker to decorate and add players' names to the footballs. Put a blob of poster tack on the back of each one.
- Players line up about six feet away from the goal. One at a time, each player is blindfolded, spun around three times by another person, and set loose to try to stick their football between the uprights. (No reaching out your empty hand to feel the wall.) Play several rounds with 3 points awarded for each field goal. Highest score wins.
Wooden Spoon Guess Who
What you'll need:
How to play:
After being blindfolded, one player has to guess the identity of another by touching that person with the spoons only. Meanwhile, the "touchee" tries not to crack up while being poked and prodded. "The best part is a five-year-old can play it with a forty-five-year-old," says Jan, whose family had a blast playing this touchy-feely game of Guess Who last Thanksgiving. "The kids laugh -- it's so hysterical."
What you'll need:
- Blindfold
- Wooden spoons
How to play:
After being blindfolded, one player has to guess the identity of another by touching that person with the spoons only. Meanwhile, the "touchee" tries not to crack up while being poked and prodded. "The best part is a five-year-old can play it with a forty-five-year-old," says Jan, whose family had a blast playing this touchy-feely game of Guess Who last Thanksgiving. "The kids laugh -- it's so hysterical."
Thanksgiving TV Bingo
What you'll need:
How to play:
What you'll need:
- Bingo game board templates
- Pennies, for markers
How to play:
- Download* the necessary number of themed bingo boards for your game:
Thanksgiving Day Parade (contains 6 unique game boards)
Thanksgiving Day Football (contains 6 unique game boards)
*To view and print these files you'll need Acrobat Reader which is available for free from the Adobe site.
While watching TV, players should look at their boards and call out the items, like "a baton twirler," or "Rowdy, the Dallas Cowboys mascot" as they show up on the tube. Each player places a penny on the corresponding square on his or her card. The winner is the first player to complete an entire row of five horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
Tippy Tepee
What you'll need:
How to play:
What you'll need:
- wire cutters or strong scissors (an adult's job)
- 20 bamboo skewers
- scrapbook paper
- tacky glue
How to play:
- Setup:
To make it, use wire cutters or strong scissors to trim the point from
20 bamboo skewers so that they're 6 to 8 inches long (an adult's job).
Form a ring from a 4- by 3/4-inch strip of scrapbook paper by overlapping the ends about 1/2 inch and securing them with tacky glue or tape. Place the sticks inside the ring and set them on a table, twisting the sticks so that they fan out, as shown. - To play, take turns carefully sliding a stick up and out of the tepee. Whoever makes the tepee fall down loses.*
Gourd Games
- Pumpkin Bowling: Arrange a triangle of 10 empty plastic 1- or 2-liter bottles. Players take turns gently rolling a pumpkin into the pins, with three chances to knock them all down.
- Pumpkin Roll: Determine a starting line and a finish line. Set 2 pumpkins on their sides at the start and have the racers line up behind them. At "Go," each pair of challengers uses sturdy brooms to propel the pumpkins over the finish line.
Turkey Trot Game
What you'll need:
What you'll need:
- Turkey Mascot
- In this wacky backyard contest, players pair up with their elbows linked, and each team is handed a turkey mascot. You can make a mascot by taping a colored-paper turkey head to one end of a football. (You can also just stuff a brown bag with crumpled newspaper and draw on a face with colored markers.)
- On cue, the pairs try to make their way to the finish line at the far end of the playing field.
- The first team to get there without dropping their bird or unlinking their arms wins.
Ask Me Anything
How to play
How to play
- The Setup: Make a basic game board (we recommend dividing a piece of sturdy cardboard into about 30 spaces) or simply use a board from a game you have on hand, such as Candy Land. On index cards, write questions that will help uncover interesting facts about your family members (find a set of questions here).
Place the question cards facedown in a pile and assign each player a game piece. - To Play: The first player draws a card and reads the question aloud to the player on his right. The player writes down his answer while the questioner writes down what he thinks the answer will be. Both players then read their answers aloud. If they match, the questioner rolls the dice and moves his piece that number of spaces, then draws another question to ask another player.
If the answers don't match, the next player draws a question. The first player to reach the designated end space wins.
