It can be the best of times. It can be the worst of times. I’m referring to Thanksgiving. Or more specifically Thanksgiving gatherings with extended family… and a heaping helping of dysfunction.
I once saw a greeting card that read: “Thanksgiving, bringing out the best in family dysfunction since 1863.” Hey, if you can’t prevent it, you might as well embrace it. In many clans, no Turkey Day celebration would be complete without some family drama. Still, you don’t have to let the feud between Uncle Larry and Cousin Stewart ruin your holiday. Nor should you allow meltdowns by your youngest guests to put a damper on a day reserved for counting blessings.
If you are planning to host a house full of children this Thanksgiving have the following Turkey Day-themed boredom busters on hand to ensure peace amongst your pint-sized partygoers:
Thanksgiving Tag: Gather the kids in a circle and give each child the name of a Thanksgiving food, such as “turkey” or “mashed potatoes.” Then, select one child to be “it” and have him or her stand in the middle of the circle and call out two Thanksgiving foods. The children whose food items were called have to run around the circle and trade places before “it” tags them. The child who gets tagged is then “it.”
Gobble Game: Bring all the kids together in the basement or another large room. Select one child to close his eyes as you hide a small object, such as a colored ball somewhere in the room. The rest of the kids can keep their eyes open so they can see where you hid the ball. Next, have the child whose eyes were closed look for the object, while the other children in the room gobble like a turkey. Instruct the kids to gobble quietly as the seeker gets farther from the object and louder as the seeker gets closer to the object.
Candy Corn Relay: You’ll need a bag of candy corn, four bowls and two small spoons. To start, divide the kids into two teams. Next, place two bowls of candy corn at one end of the room and two empty bowls at the other end of the room. The object of the game is to take a piece of candy corn on a spoon from the first bowl and deposit it in the empty bowl without dropping it. Once the candy corn is safely placed in the second bowl, the child runs back to his team and passes the spoon to the next player. The first team to get all of the candy corn into the empty bowl wins the game.
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