Thanksgiving Game and Activity

Game played as a family and Decorating a Turkey feather was the activity.

For my son's school project we had to decorate one turkey feather to make one "family turkey" for their classroom. We had to decorate it however we like. This was a project "for family to do together and mainly we had to make it represent our family."

My idea of doing this project together was to allow my son to decorate the feather how he wanted and the only way to include my 2 year old daughter and husband to be a part of this was to play a game and attach it to the turkey feather. Since as a family we do lot of activities together, we decided to do this thanksgiving game as an "activity together".

ThanksGiving Game :- I found this game over the internet when searching for thanksgiving ideas. This game is called "Thankerchief" - Pass a thankerchief (handkerchief) around in a circle. The player holding the "thankerchief" when the poem ends, must say aloud, one thing for which they are thankful for. The poem is as follows :

Thankerchief, thankerchief, around you go
Where you'll stop, nobody knows,
But when you do, someone must say,
What they are thankful for this day.

We played a game as a family and it turned out to be a huge success !! My kids still want to play this game !! They just loved it. Since we played this I represented this on a card. Inside of the card as we open I have put all our names and on the right hand side (inside of the card) we have written what we are thankful for.

Feather Decoration - Coming to the main part of decorating the feather which was my sons contribution , he asked for feathers, glitters, leaves and buttons (as per the instructions given ) and I had told him only to include feathers in the middle with the "card I had made". The rest of the area was totally his idea of decorating with all the items.

He actually surprised me with his motor skills from creating patterns, applying glue and sticking all the items. My assistances was very minimal (except for the card) and enjoyed more by watching him decorate the feather.


Back Side of Feather - At the back of the feather he wrote his name, room number and his grade. I created the back side of the card to include the "contribution information" and mainly a "thank you" note to the school for giving this wonderful idea of decoration which got us to play this game as a family and a group hug.
This Game and activity turned out to be the best activity done for this month.

Halloween crafts and decorations 2009

Usually we have the tradition of pumpkin carving and because of time limitations we had to skip it. But it does not feel Halloween for the kids if you don't do anything. So this year we (my son and I) decided to do the decorations and hang it outside instead of buying the decorations from the store. It was indeed a nice project for both of us. We could sit and complete this in 2 days.

I will walk you through the list of items created.

From the door:- we can see few things. A Happy Halloween writing, a pumpkin wreath, a bat and ghost cutouts. Clear picture is given below.

Happy Halloween writing:- We wrote a "HAPPY HALLOWEEN" on a long paper and painted it using "glow in the dark" paint (orange color) and my son colored the rest with black crayon. We did 3 of them (One for the door) on on the sideway (done by my son) and one on the front gate.

Pumpkin Wreath :- Mommy did many pumpkin using dot-art pens on paper and my son gave directions on how to draw the eyes, nose and mouth. Then we taped to a pipe cleaner in a circle form and hung it on the door.

Bat and Ghost cutouts :- From the web (activity for kids website) got a picture of bat and ghosts. So I asked him to cut out bat on black paper and ghosts on white paper. For the ghosts, he drew the eyes and mouth and wrote BOO. For the bat we put eyes with white glow in the dark paint.

On the sides :- we just hung the "happy Halloween writing" or only the bat and ghost cutouts. We did the same on sides visible near the door and near the postbox area.

On the bottom:- near the door and step (see the top picture) we can see a white ghost (4 of them). This one we used a milk can painted the front"white" (glow in the dark paint) and my son got to do one can fully. He drew eyes and the mouth with black marker on all of them. Then I cut the back little bit to stuff the white kitchen tissue roll so that can will look more white. To cover the lid just used a white kitchen tissue and taped it at the back.

Overall the project came out well and we just loved it. The only draw back was the glow in the dark paints did not glow as much as I expected it to !!.