Many times when it comes to entertaining guests, throwing parties, and coming up with entertainment for your Thanksgiving Day celebrations, there is a lot of stress involved. You want things to come out just right. You want to make sure that everything is perfect and that everyone has a good time. In thinking of all the consequences of throwing a really awful party, it can be easy to overlook the fact that very simple ideas often turn out just as well as elaborate ones. To help ease a little bit of your Thanksgiving Day party planning anxiety, here are a few simple ideas for Thanksgiving games that are sure to please everyone (including the host):
The Warm-Cold game, with a Thanksgiving twist
Many times classic games can be changed in simple ways to make for a holiday appropriate activity. For example, you can play the hot-cold game but instead of saying hot when the person gets close to the goal and cold as they get further away, you can gobble like a turkey and allow your volume to indicate how close the player is to the goal. One person (the person who is “It”) plays the role of the turkey farmer while the other players are the helpers. The farmer leavesÂ
the room and the helpers hide a small toy turkey. The farmer returns and he must now find the turkey with the help of the other members of the group who will give clues by “gobbling” like turkeys in a soft voice when the farmer is far away from the turkey and in a louder voice as the farmer gets closer to where the turkey is hidden. You can time how long it takes each player to find the turkey and award prizes or simply allow the kids to play this game and award everyone with a prize for doing such a good job.
The Cornucopia Game
In the cornucopia game, (Some have called it cornucopia confusion or the fruit salad game) all of the players sit in a circle on chairs. There should be one less chair than there are players (like in musical chairs). The person who is “It” stands in the middle of the circle and points to each of the players naming them as he goes around the circle. The names can be names of items associated with a cornucopia (potato, cranberry, corn, turkey, etc.), names associated with the Pilgrims, or you could have a different Thanksgiving theme each time you play. After everyone in the circle has been given a name, the leader calls out two names, for instance…
Turkey and cranberry!” At which point the two players with these names must quickly switch places. The leader keeps calling out names until at random the leader announces that the cornucopia has spilled and everyone, including the leader, then scrambles for a new place. The player without a seat at the end of the chaos becomes the new leader. The leader can choose to have everyone use the same names or he can assign new names to the members of the group.
Twenty questions: Thanksgiving edition
Twenty questions is a traditional game that can very easily be given a Thanksgiving makeover. All that you need to do is to choose someone or something related to Thanksgiving to be your chosen 20 questions item. To remind you of how the game is played, one player says “I am thinking of a person, place or thing,” and the other players try to guess what it is by asking no more than twenty “yes” or “no” questions.
More posts like this one in Celebrations.