The school is closed Wednesday. The relatives begin to arrive Wednesday night. Thursday is a marathon of cooking where the parent responsible for the child is up to elbows in the turkey. Friday everyone is full and slightly irritable. The weekend is stretched ahead with no schedule at all. And somewhere in between, there is a preschooler with the whole week's worth of energy, a company of visiting grandparents, and no school to absorb any of that.
The traditional activities related to crafts, which are suggested for Thanksgiving, are designed for the classroom situation. They usually require a short time span to be completed. There is no consideration for a whole week at home here. This list differs from the conventional one and offers you activities for preschoolers for Thanksgiving week depending on how tired you are. They were compiled by observing how families spend their week at home by one of the play spaces in Los Angeles.
Thanksgiving Activities for Preschoolers Sorted by Tiredness
There is no other way to classify the activities for preschoolers for thanksgiving but to estimate how much of yourself the activity requires.
Zero-effort activities are the ones that give a parent twenty minutes. A box of dried corn kernels, spoons and cups to play with them. A set of paper and crayons with a simple task: draw what you are grateful for. Cardboard boxes, which any preschooler prefers to the thing that was inside them. It looks not very impressive, but it works.
Half-effort activities let your attention stay on something else, because you can do them sitting right next to the child. Setting the table with the insistence that the kid wants to put every fork. Washing the potatoes. Tearing the bread for stuffing, which is actually a four-year-old dream and it takes longer time than to do this yourself.
Full-effort activities are the ones that you should keep for when you feel that you really have the energy to engage in them. Cooking projects, the big craft and the walk to the park. There is no way you will have the energy to complete three activities of this type in one day.
The families that survive the week are not those who have the best Pinterest boards. They are the ones who match the activity to their energy level of this particular day.
Thanksgiving Preschool Activities in the Kitchen
If you search for thanksgiving activity ideas for preschool children, or for thanksgiving activity ideas for preschoolers in general, you will see that most of them ignore the kitchen. However, there is something happening there the whole week and the child wants to participate in this process.
The real jobs for preschoolers in the kitchen: tearing the bread into pieces for stuffing. Washing the vegetables in the bowl of water. Mashing the boiled potatoes in the masher. Stirring in the bowl. Arranging the olives or pickles on the serving dish.
The pie crust scraps are the real secret weapon. The child will be happy to have the leftover dough, a rolling pin and a cookie cutter. You will get twenty minutes for finishing the pie. Their shapes will be baked with yours and the child will be able to eat them warm and he or she will feel that he or she has participated in cooking the food.
This approach will help you solve the issue of thankfulness conversation in a better way than the worksheet. At the moment when both of you are busy doing something with your hands, the four-year-old will actually talk. Ask the child to tell what he or she likes in grandma's house while doing some kind of a job. The answers will be more interesting than the ones you could get at a directed exercise.
Preschool activities for thanksgiving which involve the meal itself help the child create some connection with this holiday. The one who participated in the preparation of the mashed potatoes eats them. It is important on the day when the menu is not familiar.
Thanksgiving Activities for Preschoolers Besides the Handprint Turkey
The handprint turkey got its place and every family should have it. However, the fun thanksgiving activities for preschoolers could include some other things besides it. They do not require any visit to the craft store.
The nature turkeys use whatever you find in your yard or park. The leaves become the feathers, the pinecone becomes the body of a turkey, the twigs become the legs. It is a walk and a craft at once and it is exactly what the holiday week requires from you. In Los Angeles, the November leaves are really falling in the right way for this in most of the neighborhoods.
The thankful trees are a whole-week project rather than a single activity and it is actually the reason why it is so helpful. All you need is a branch in the jar, paper leaves and a marker. Every day, everybody adds a new leaf with the thing they are thankful for. It takes about five minutes every day and the result of this activity will decorate the table as a centerpiece the whole family has made.
The sensory bins built around the holiday are more effective than the crafts at this age. The dried corn, the beans, the small pumpkins, the scoops and the funnels. Put them on the sheet and accept the mess as the price for it. It is the activity that will occupy the preschooler for about thirty minutes.
Sorting colors with candy corn, cranberries threading on the string, coffee filter turkeys with markers and a spray bottle. These activities also work and the main useful feature they have is that there is no perfect result expected, so nobody gets frustrated.
Besides the activities that require some materials, there are also fun preschool thanksgiving activities which don't require anything at all. For example, the turkey tag in the backyard, the gratitude circle at dinner when each one tells what he or she is thankful for and the dance party.
Thanksgiving Activities for Preschoolers' Groups When Cousins Come
Everything changes when the number of the kids grows from one to six. The activities for thanksgiving for preschool groups differ from those for one kid. They should absorb the noise, accept different ages and survive the case when a child leaves the activity halfway through.
The preschool thanksgiving games activities that work for a mixed group: the turkey feather hunt where the paper feathers are hidden in the house and the kids have to collect them into a paper turkey. The pass the pumpkin, which is played like the hot potato. The turkey waddle race where the only requirement is the waddle. The freeze dance with the holiday music.
The key point of the group games at this age is that the rules should fit in one sentence and the turns should take less than thirty seconds. Otherwise, there will be the case when the five-year-old will explain the rules wrong to the three-year-old and the seven-year-old will lose interest completely.
The activities for thanksgiving preschool parties will benefit from having a job for the older kids. Cousins who are eight years old and older could run the game, hide the feathers and be the judge. The participation in the activity helps to keep the older kids engaged and keeps the younger ones organized without an adult presence in the middle of the activity.
However, when it all falls apart, it will happen inevitably and it is necessary to deal with this situation. Just send the kids out to run. The group games are the structure that will work for forty minutes, but not for the whole afternoon.
Preschool Activities for Thanksgiving Around Los Angeles
The special advantage of Los Angeles Thanksgiving is that the November weather cooperates in such a way as it does not cooperate in most of the places. Therefore, there are some activities for thanksgiving for preschoolers that you can really make on the actual holiday day.
The morning beach walks are possible in November. The Santa Monica coast in late autumn is less crowded, it is cooler and actually more pleasant than it is in August. The beach walk in the morning helps to burn the energy that would otherwise be burned under the dining table.
The neighborhood parks stay available the whole week. The Virginia Avenue Park in Pico district of Santa Monica, the Tongva Park downtown, the bluff paths at the Palisades Park. Free, open and exactly what a preschooler needs before sitting at the table with the adults for two hours.
The thanksgiving day activities for preschoolers in Los Angeles include the traditional things this city does well. The turkey trot runs in many neighborhoods in the morning of Thanksgiving day, the community meals and the pure pleasure of the holiday when nobody needs a coat.
The gap in the LA version of this holiday is the rain. When it happens in November, which it will, the whole outdoor layer disappears and a family ends up indoors with visiting relatives and a preschooler who spent the last six hours indoors.
Why the Indoor Play is the Thanksgiving Week Secret Weapon
The scenario of the previous paragraph shows exactly why our floor gets the place in this week and it is worth stating clearly what the indoor option actually solves.
It is not about the entertainment. It is about the exact problem of a preschooler who carries five days of energy in a house full of adults who need to cook, talk and rest. Two hours of climbing, sliding and running will reset a child completely and it will also reset the house because the child coming home from this session is a completely different one at the dinner table.
The Fun Play World offers the Walk-in Open Play at 828 Pico Blvd in Santa Monica and at 10672 West Pico Blvd in Los Angeles every weekday starting from 10 AM and every Sunday starting from 9 AM. Multi-level structures for climbing, floors zoned by the difficulty level, soft surface everywhere, the area for seating for the adults to sit rather than to hover. The first child costs $35 for a two-hour session, $25 for the second sibling, $20 for the third with two adults for each family included. It means a lot during a week when visiting grandparents want to join you. The $200 monthly membership will be useful for those families who find themselves in the situation when they use the place repeatedly during this holiday period.
The Wednesday before and the Friday after are the days when families use it the most. Wednesday burns the pre-holiday buildup. Friday absorbs the post-turkey restlessness while the adults recover. It works better than another afternoon of trying to invent the activities at home.
The holiday hours vary, so it is worth checking before coming there during this week.
Thanksgiving Activities for Preschoolers That Cost Nothing
It is worth mentioning that the best thanksgiving activities for preschoolers are usually free and it is useful to collect them in one list because holiday week gets expensive very quickly.
The gratitude jar - slips of paper, a jar and adding one slip to it each day. Reading them aloud during the dinner is the reward for this activity. The leaf collecting on a walk, then the sorting them by color at the kitchen table. The baking soda and vinegar in a pie tin - it is not at all thematic, but it occupies a preschooler until the vinegar finishes. Storytime with the books about the holiday, which most of the LA branches have in November.
The helping with the preparation also belongs to the list. It does not cost anything beyond patience. Folding the napkins. Carrying non-breakable things to the table. Making the place cards for all the guests with crayons giving the four-year-old the status of the adult at a table where he or she is the smallest one.
The practice of gratitude itself is worth keeping it past November. Asking a preschooler to tell what good thing has happened to him or her every evening takes ninety seconds and builds the thing that survives this holiday week.
