Saying Grace
A good chance to list all the important people in our livves, and give thanks and special blessings to them.

Giving Thanks Placemats
The goal of this craft is to create a collage filled with drawings and pictures of all the things your children are thankful for. Cut photos from magazines, or print some photos from your computer.

Older children can write captions under the photos or draw their own. Be sure to put the child’s name and the year on it.

If you make this collage from two standard letter size pieces of construction paper taped side-by-side, you can take the completed collage to a copy shop when you’re done and have it laminated. It then becomes a placemat that you can use every Thanksgiving for years to come.

Thankful Paper Chain
Another way to remind your children of their blessings is to create a paper chain. This is similar to a regular paper chain – where you cut strips of paper and connect them together as loops, but there’s one difference. You write on the strips of paper before you connect them.

Write the things you are thankful for with your children. For instance, “Grandma plays games with me” or “My teacher is nice.”

The fun part of this activity is to make the chain as long as possible – showing all your blessings. If you’d like to keep this up during Christmas, just use green and white paper and gold paper.

Thanksgiving Tree
This is another take on the idea above and works really well if you have several kids in the family. Get each child to trace their hand on yellow, red, or brown construction paper. Cut out the hand shapes and write (or have the child write) what they are thankful for on the hand shape.

Cut a tree trunk shape out of brown construction paper. Glue it on a large piece of poster board. Let the kids add their hand shapes as leaves above the tree trunk, turning it into a beautiful fall colored tree.

Thankful Book
This idea is similar to the others, except it’s more of a keepsake. Purchase a photo album or scrapbook kit and make a “blessings” theme. Add photos of loved ones, including stories about why they are special to you.

Also, include pages of your favorite foods, favorite stories, favorite movies and all the other things that make you happy and thankful.

Any time you or your kids feel down, you can open your blessing book to see all the reasons you have to be happy, and thankful for the blessings in your life.

Start Planning Early
Nothing can spoil a Thanksgiving party more than a burned-out hostess. So, be sure to start planning your party well in advance.

Make a master list of what needs to be done and when, and start cleaning and preparing ahead of time.

Purchase non-perishable items at least a week before your event. Don’t forget to buy the turkey early as well. You wil want to have the right-sized one without compromising, and remember also, that it will take several days to thaw in the fridge.

If you have room in your freezer, you can purchase the turkey and other frozen items like pies and veggies weeks ahead of time.

Delegate the Turkey
A great way to entertain the men is to put them in charge of the turkey. This may be untraditional to some, but in many areas of the country, the men are in charge of deep-frying the turkey. There’s nothing quite as entertaining as watching a group of men standing around a vat of boiling peanut oil, discussing the turkey. Plus, it gives you more freedom to enjoy the party.

Otherwise, get a good turkey recipe and all the fixings for stuffing together, and let them have at it.

Plan activities
Board games are always fun for kids and adults. Get everyone laughing with the newest game. Or buy a DVD-style game like Scene-It and gather around the TV for some trivia.

Of course, old family favorites would be a bit hit as well. Dust off that old edition of Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly, and get everyone playing.

Just for the Kids
Set up a craft table for the kids. Set out coloring pages (if you can get some Thanksgiving ones, that would be great).

You can find lots of free coloring pages online. Just print a few of them for each child, and lots of crayons. That should keep them busy while you prepare the rest of the food.

Lay out pieces of orange, brown, and yellow construction paper and show the kids how to make a turkey by tracing their hand. Or have the kids make pilgrim hats out of black and white construction paper.

For the Adults
One of the staples of Thanksgiving is football. Traditionally, the men gather in the living room to watch the game. One way to keep the party lively is to give them a football and send them outside to toss it around during commercial breaks.

This can really get the men talking and having a great time. And, ladies – don’t be shy. Jump right in there with them. Just make sure the guys are keeping an eye on that cooking turkey…

Party Games
Charades, hide and seek, pass the parcel, can all be played in company, with adults and kids alike. The important thing is to be together, and be thankful.

Turkey Apple

Turkey apples are a fun craft to make with the kids as well as a healthy snack.   You will need an apple, 6 toothpicks, 1 large and 5 miniature marshmallows as well as some raisins and one piece of candy corn for each turkey.  Set the apple stem up on a flat surface. Stick a toothpick in the top part of one side of the apple. Add the large marshmallow to the top of the toothpick.  Decorate the face of the turkey with two raisins as eyes and stick the candy corn in upside down into the marshmallow to make the beak.  Thread each of the remaining toothpicks with 3 raisins, and then top it off with one of the miniature marshmallows. These will be the tail feathers of your turkey. Stick the 4 toothpicks evenly spaced on the opposite side of the top of the apple.  

Corn Collage

Cut a basic corn shape out of yellow construction paper. Tear little pieces of yellow and purple tissue paper and crumble them into little balls. Glue them on the corn shape to represent kernels of corn. Cut leaf shapes out of green construction paper and glue them behind your ear of corn.  

Pilgrim Hat

You need a large paper grocery bag and some construction paper in black and yellow for each child. Fold the rim of the bag over to make a brim for the hat.  Then cut a large strip of black construction paper and tape or glue it around the hat. Cut a belt buckle shape out of the yellow construction paper and glue it to the belt in the front of the hat.  

Turkey Handprint crafts

This craft is a family tradition in many homes. First, outline your child’s foot once on a piece of brown construction paper. Then, outline her hands twice on red or yellow construction paper. Cut a beak out of orange construction paper. 

Of course, if you visit craft stores or online craft supply stores, you’ll find thousands of craft ideas for your kids. They offer items like foam leaves, felt Pilgrim hats, quilts in fall colors, foam turkeys, stickers, craft kits and more.

If you are serving wine, you will need the appropriate glasses, either real, or plastic. Have a variety of sizes of cups and glasses for juice, soda and so on if you are entertaining little ones as well. Make sure you have enough cups and mugs on hand for coffee and tea after the meal.  

Other Advanced Preparations

Try to organize the coffeemaker to be switched on easily, and desserts baked and ready to serve before the guests comes. The desserts can be a decoration themselves depending on how fancy they are. You can get decorative cake tins which will shape your cakes-turkeys, a cornucopia, pumpkins and so on.

Changing Courses

If you are having a sit down meal and doing appetizers and salad or maybe even soup first, and then will have to change plates for the main entrée, make sure you have the right number of small plates and bowls, forks and spoons. 

 If you are using the smaller plates in your dish set for the salads, you can either have someone wash them to use them for dessert, or make life easier and just designate either plain glass dessert plates or paper plates so there is less frenetic activity in the kitchen and everyone can enjoy their meal. Make sure you also have enough forks and napkins on hand for the dessert course. Hopefully all these hints and tips will help make your Thanksgiving a happy and relatively stress free holiday.