Fun Educational Thanksgiving Activities for All Ages
Are you looking for some fun and educational Thanksgiving activities for all ages? The holiday season can get very busy with homeschool, church, cooking, baking, and family events.
Sometimes school can end up getting put on the backburner. This is why I love to incorporate educational activities into our holiday plans. There is so much to learn and discuss while you are cleaning, cooking, baking pies, and preparing to host friends and family in your home.
Educational Thanksgiving Activities for All Ages
We personally take the entire week off for Thanksgiving break in our homeschool, but that doesn't mean that the learning has to stop. Thanksgiving season is the perfect time to foster relationships with your children without the textbooks or lesson plans being in the way.
Let's take a look at some fun Thanksgiving activities that are great for the whole family. These can be modified for younger children, elementary students, middle school students and even older teens in high school.
Take a Nature Walk
The month of November is a great time to take a family walk to appreciate the beautiful fall season and the cooler weather. Take this time to explore concepts like habitats, ecosystems, and seasonal changes. Have your children collect leaves or other items for a nature journal or leaf identification activity.
Small children love collecting acorns and leaves and building an entire nature collection with their found items. Older children may want to keep track of their finds in a nature journal, or draw what they found on their walk.
You can even collect fall leaves, pinecones and acorns to create a unique, handcrafted centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner table.
Thanksgiving Read Alouds
As you are planning for school during the month of November, you can include Thanksgiving themed books or read alouds to your themed lesson plans.
Some of our favorite read alouds are:
- The Thank You Book by Mo Willems
- Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet
- Bear Says Thanks by Karma Wilson
- Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wendy Delvin
- Squanto's Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving by Joseph Bruchac
- A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving by y Daphne Pendergrass, Charles M. Schulz
- Sarah Gives Thanks: How Thanksgiving Became a National Holiday by
- Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks by by Margaret Sutherland and Sonja Lamut
- Thanksgiving is… by Gail Gibbons
- Over the River and Through the Wood by Emma Randall
Thanksgiving is about pilgrims and history--and turkey, of course!--but most importantly, it's a holiday all about everything that we are thankful for. Cheerful, colorful illustrations accompany the simple text in this celebration of family, friends, and the holiday that brings them all together. A great introduction to the concept of giving thanks and appreaciating every day things.
Thanksgiving Crafts
A wonderful way to get into the holiday spirit in your homeschool is by making crafts together. Some of our favorite Thanksgiving activities are making crafts that are meaningful.
Everyone loves the classic turkey craft with a pinecone, googly eyes and feathers, and those make great centerpieces for a table. However, there are also some more meaningful crafts that can get your kids thinking about being grateful and giving thanks. We love gratitude jars and creating a thankful tree!
How to Make a Gratitude Jar
- Find a glass jar or container.
- Decorate the jar with markers, stickers, ribbon or leave.
- Cut small strips of paper that are large enough to write what you are grateful for.
- Each day, write down something you are thankful for and add it to the jar.
- On Thanksgiving day, empty the jar and read the notes together as a family.
How to Make a Thankful Tree
- Use butcher paper to cut a large tree trunk and branches. Stick it to a wall or door where everyone can see it.
- Cut out leaf shapes from fall colored construction paper. This is a great way for small children to work on their fine motor skills.
- Have each family member write something that they are thankful for on a leaf and attach it to the tree with a glue stick or tape.
- Watch your tree “grow” with gratitude as Thanksgiving approaches!
Create a Gratitude Journal
During the month of November encourage everyone to write or draw what they’re thankful for. A gratitude journal can be a small composition notebook, sketchbook or some paper hole punched with construction paper and ribbon.
- Introduce your Sunday School students to the joy of keeping a prayer journal with this fun fall activity. Kids will feel more satisfied and excited about praying for their blessings and concerns when they do it in a journal they created on their own.
- When complete the scripture reads "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. I Chronicles 16:34."
- The cover of this prayer journal lets you use the included self-adhesive foam pieces to finish the scripture.
- Makes 12. Includes self-adhesive foam pieces.
- Size: 5" x 7" 25 pgs.
These gratitude journals can be kept daily or weekly. Your children can review them to reflect on their personal growth and as praise reports on what God has done for them. This is also a great way to work on handwriting skills during a holiday break from school.
Read or Memorize Thanksgiving Poetry
Many Charlotte Mason style homeschoolers love to incorporate poetry into their morning work and morning time. Here is a list of wonderful poems that you can find on the public domain. Read them aloud to your children or working on memorizing them so they can recite them on Thanksgiving.
- We Thank Thee – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A Thanksgiving – John Kendrick Bangs
- The New England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day – Lydia Maria Child
- The Pilgrim Feathers – Leonard Bacon
- Thoughts of Thanksgiving – Charles Leonard White
- Song of the Pilgrims – Thomas Cogswell Upham
- Prayer – Robert Louis Stevenson
- Harvest Hymn – John Critchley Prince
- A Song for Merry Harvest – Eliza Cook
- Thanksgiving – Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- A Song of Thanks – Edward Smyth Jones
Thanksgiving Music Lesson
Do you enjoy adding music lessons to your homeschool? This is also the perfect time of year to learn and sing songs of thanksgiving with your children.
Music in Our Homeschool has a free 15-minute Thanksgiving music lesson with videos of the songs and activities as well as a free music Thanksgiving gratitude page!
In this lesson you will learn these songs and hymns:
- Over the River and Through the Wood
- Come Ye Thankful People Come
- We Gather Together
- Thanksgiving Song
- Count Your Blessings
Make a Thanksgiving Trivia Game
A trivia game is a great way for teaching Thanksgiving history and customs. Work together to create trivia questions on historical facts, like the Pilgrims, Native American culture, and early Thanksgiving traditions.
These can be adjusted for any age, from basic questions to more detailed history for older kids. You can even add fun facts and pop culture surrounding football and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
Thanksgiving Writing Prompts
Writing prompts can help your children to get their creative juices flowing and get them to think outside of the box. Themed writing prompts are a fun activity to do instead of your normal grammar or bookwork over the holidays.
Here are 10 fun Thanksgiving writing prompt ideas for your children:
- What are you most thankful for this year, and why?
- Write a letter of thanks to someone who has made a positive difference in your life.
- If you could make anything for Thanksgiving dinner what would it be?
- What is your favorite Thanksgiving tradition?
- Write an acrostic poem with the word THANKFUL.
- Your mom just set the Thanksgiving turkey on the counter, and when she went to get the knife, the dog came and ate the turkey! What are you going to do for dinner now?
- Do you like pumpkin spice or apple cinnamon? Why is one flavor better than the other?
- What is the best Thanksgiving dessert and why?
- Pretend you are a pilgrim on the Mayflower and tell us what the journey was like across the ocean.
- What do turkeys use their feathers for?
Our Brain Bites include printable educational placemats and writing prompt sheets!
Christ-centered Thanksgiving content that shows the history of America's Thanksgiving traditions with fun facts about Thanksgiving around the world, a popular food timeline, an introduction to the Mother of Thanksgiving, The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and so much more!
Math in the Kitchen
Thanksgiving cooking is a fun way to work on practical math skills, especially when making a pumpkin pie or cookies for dessert! Younger kids can count and measure out the ingredients needed for the recipe.
Older kids can help you to create a grocery list and come up with a budget for your Thanksgiving meal. Determine the number of servings needed based on the number of guests. This is a great way to work on math skills in the kitchen. If you are cooking for a large family, you will probably want to double the recipe which involves adding fractions.
Thanksgiving Brain Bites
Our Thanksgiving Brain Bites Educational Placemats offer a fun and easy way to keep children entertained and learning about Thanksgiving traditions during family meals. These printable placemats feature Christ-centered Thanksgiving content and engaging activities that entertain and educate.
Feed the brain with the body!
Thanksgiving Brain Bites Educational Placemats for Kids offers a fun and easy way to keep children entertained and learning about Thanksgiving traditions during family meals. designed specifically for busy homeschooling parents and families seeking kid-friendly table resources.
These take little prep work and provide an easy solution for parents who want to incorporate an educational element to their busy holiday season.
Your kids will learn about:
- The history of America's Thanksgiving Traditions
- Fun and interesting facts about Thanksgiving around the world
- A popular food timeline
- Introduction to the Mother of Thanksgiving
- The Macy's Thanksgiving day parade
- Writing prompts
Christ-Centered Thanksgiving Activities
Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays, because it is all about giving thanks. There are many opportunities to talk to your children about how the Pilgrims came to America because they were being persecuted for their faith, and how God provided for them.
This is also a great time of year to teach your children about giving thanks to God and showing what you are grateful for. This can often be missed with the hustle and bustle of the holiday. You can teach them to put their focus on the Lord and serve others with these Christ-centered Thanksgiving activities.
Serve in Your Community
Thanksgiving break is a great opportunity to gather up your entire family for a service project. Many churches will do a food drive where you can participate in collecting and sorting food, or delivering Thanksgiving baskets to families in need.
Soup kitchens and homeless shelters can always use help cooking and serving up a hot Thanksgiving dinner. This is a great way for your children to learn about serving and sharing Christ's love with others. The best part of this activity is it will show them how much they have to be grateful for.
Thanksgiving Bible Study or Devotional
Read Psalms 100. It is a Psalm specifically for giving thanks.
Do a Thanksgiving Bible Study or devotional with your family. You can pick one to work on throughout the whole month, or a short one to do the week of Thanksgiving.
Gratitories is a fast-paced, exciting game designed to help your family cultivate a heart of thankfulness toward God and others. This simple card game is perfect for kids and adults alike, making it a fun and meaningful way to focus on gratitude during family time.
Share Thanks Around the Table
Share what you are thankful for around the table before you are about to eat your Thanksgiving dinner. This Thanksgiving activity can become a treasured tradition in your home. It is also a wonderful way to shine the light of Jesus to other family members or friends that may be visiting that day.
Pull out the grateful jar that you made throughout the month, and everyone can pick a slip of paper and read from it. Or pick a leaf off of the Thankful tree and read that out loud. You can also tell each family member what they mean to you and why you are thankful for them.
Final Thoughts
Incorporating Thanksgiving activities into your homeschool provides a unique opportunity to teach gratitude, history, and family values through engaging, hands-on learning.
Whether through crafts, nature walks, or journaling, these experiences promote thankfulness and create lasting family memories. By making Thanksgiving learning intentional and fun, you can enrich your homeschool with meaningful lessons that emphasize thankfulness, family togetherness, and faith.
