Thanksgiving Family Games for a Zoom Party

We’re having a zoom Thanksgiving this year so I’ve come up with a few Thanksgiving family games. A zoom dinner should be more than just sitting and watching each other eat.

Of course, we’ll have good conversation, too. But I believe that interactive games keep the family engaged and more deeply connected.

Thanksgiving Family Game I

This one is easy and requires no advanced preparation, except to cut out some feathers from cardstock. You simply go around the table, alternating between zoom households, to give thanks around a topic category.

For example, the Thanksgiving meal.

I’m thankful for:

• The cooks who made the meal
• Farmers
• Delivery service
• Supermarket staff
• Truckers who transported the food
• Dish washers and all who help to clean up afterwards
• Developer of the recipes
• Grandma, who taught us how to cook
• The turkey
• Leftovers, so no cooking tomorrow
• And so forth

The idea is to avoid being the person who can’t come up with an answer when it’s their turn. That person gets a turkey feather. You can get the feather template here.

Keep awarding a turkey feather to anyone who can’t contribute an answer, until you’ve exhausted all possibilities. The one who gets the most feathers is the turkey.

Don’t eliminate anyone who gets a feather from the game, because they may think of an answer when it’s their turn again.

Give young children lots of hints–we don’t want the four-year-old to be the turkey!

You can do other categories, such as: family, religion, or health. Or, get inspired by these 60 things to be thankful for in life.

Turning our thanks into a competitive game makes us dig deeper to find surprising things we might have taken for granted that, on consideration, we can be truly thankful for. All while having fun.

Thanksgiving Family Game II

This is a customized card game that explores family memories to relive moments and enjoy them again together.

Go through your camera roll and look for pictures that tell stories. Duplicate the photo and crop the duplicate to obscure the action so that everyone will have to guess.

Here are some examples:

• A photo of Little N that shows him with cookies he baked, and he’s giving a thumbs up sign. I duplicated the photo and cropped out the cookies. So, my question card reads: Why is he giving a “thumbs up”? The answer card (uncropped photo): Because he made peanut butter cookies!
• One with Miss T and grandma begs this question: What are they looking at? Answer: Easter egg colors!

To make the cards, I inserted the photos into a Word document, typed up the questions and answers, printed the document on cardstock, and cut out the cards. Make as many sets as there are households participating. Give everyone the question cards and you keep the answer cards to hold up to the video screen after everyone has made a guess.

Thanksgiving Family Game III

This is a version of Family Game II, but requires facility with PowerPoint, Keynote, or other presentation program software. You’ll make a presentation using slides with a still photo for the question and embed a video for the answer. Your game can be shown to everyone by using zoom screen sharing.

In the photo above shown on the first slide, the question is: What is she doing?

The answer would be shown as a video embedded in the next slide. In this case, she’s dancing!

If you have smartphone videos, but no still shots of those videos, you can use a free app like Frame Grabber (this one is only for iPhones) to extract a still image. There are other apps for other operating systems that will do the same thing.

Looking Ahead

Like everyone, I’m disappointed that we won’t be having an in-person family Thanksgiving. But I’d rather take precautions now, so we can come out of this pandemic and celebrate together next year. In the meantime, we connect online, we play games together, and learn to enjoy each other’s company in new ways.

.

Don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter! Every Wednesday, I’ll give you a new idea for an activity or insight to nurture the little ones in your life. Come visit!