Hot 4 Hybrid – Thanksgiving Fun
Thanksgiving – just the word evokes thoughts of little pilgrim salt & pepper shakers, getting up early to start the turkey, football, naps and of course FAMILY!!! We are having our family Thanksgiving celebration this weekend and to uphold my crown as family crafter and entertainer I came up with a few fun hybrid items to jazz up our Thanksgiving afternoon together.
Kid’s Central– I’m setting up the kitchen table as a spot where the kids (ages 1-11) can sit and do a craft, color, play a game. I created this cute turkey crayon holder to put on the table and with it activity books for the older kids. I have separate washable crayons and Thanksgiving color sheets for the 2 and under crowd.
To create the Turkey crayon holder I simply washed out a small pickle jar and then measured around the jar and up the sides to determine the size of my paper wrap. In my photoeditting software, I created a 2″ wide by 9 ” long strip of plaid paper from Melissa Bennett’s Turkey Day kit. I then put a 4″ tall turkey element from the same kit on my paper. I printed on glossy laser paper (with my inkjet printer) and trimmed using my Fiskar’s paper trimmer. I cut the turkey out by hand using scissors. To adhere to the jar, I used double stick tape on the paper. I then hot glued some felt ribbon (Michael’s $1 bin) around the jar and attached my cut out turkey using hot glue as well. Fill with crayons.
To create the Activity Books I went out on the web and found all sorts of Thanksgiving day printables from word searches, to crossword puzzles, hidden picture games , suduko, tic tac toe and mazes. In my photoeditting software I set up a 8.5″ x 11″ sheet and drew a line down the middle to represent the fold. I pasted a puzzle/activity to each side of the fold and then printed a copy of each page. At work I copied the pages and made books for each age level- 10 and up, 5-9, under 5. I made a cute title block for the front of each book using Turkey Day again, and printed the title blocks on to white paper. I made a cover for each book with cardstock and then adhered the title block on with tape runner. Now all the kids will have something fun to do together.
A contest (or two)
Pass The….Bingo – My family has a tradition of setting one long table and having everyone sit together for the Thanksgiving meal. We pass each dish around the table as we make our plates. It’s fun to sit and chat with each other as we share a blessed meal together. The kids can get kind of bored especially mine, who eat one thing on their plate and then want to go play with their cousins. To keep the kids at the table and engaged in the meal I came up with Pass The… Bingo cards.
