Thanksgiving Games for Families
Thanksgiving is one of those days when everyone ends up sitting around together at some point. Dinner might be cooking, everyone might be too full to move after eating, or you’re waiting around for someone to finally bring out dessert.
That’s a good time to have a few Thanksgiving games for families ready. You don’t need to plan out the whole day either. Pick a couple that sound fun for your family and pull them out whenever everyone starts wondering what to do next.
Thanksgiving Find the Guest Bingo
This is a fun one to start with when everyone first gets together, especially if you have family members who don’t see each other very often.
Instead of calling out regular bingo numbers, everyone gets a sheet filled with things they need to find out about the other guests. It could be someone who loves pumpkin pie, someone who traveled for Thanksgiving, someone wearing orange, or someone who helped make dinner.
Walk around asking questions and have the person who matches sign the square. The first person to complete a row wins.
You might even learn something about a family member you didn’t know before.
Thanksgiving This or That
This or That is probably one of the easiest Thanksgiving family games because you can play it anywhere. You don’t even have to leave the dinner table.
Give everyone two choices and make them pick one.
Pumpkin pie or apple pie?
Turkey or ham?
Mashed potatoes or stuffing?
Black Friday or Cyber Monday?
Watch football or take a nap?
Host Thanksgiving or be a guest?
Thanksgiving dinner or leftovers the next day?
The answers usually turn into their own conversations, especially once someone picks the very obvious wrong answer and the rest of the family has something to say about it.
Thanksgiving Price Is Right
Before everyone comes over, write down the prices of a few things you bought for Thanksgiving dinner. Then see how close everyone can get to guessing what they actually cost.
You could use the price of a turkey, can of cranberry sauce, bag of potatoes, pumpkin pie, stuffing mix, pecans, apple cider, or whatever else you bought.
Give one point to whoever gets closest for each item.
This one could be especially funny with a mix of kids and adults because some of the guesses are going to be way off.
Thanksgiving Trivia
Split everyone into teams and see how much your family actually knows about Thanksgiving.
Mix up the questions so you have some about Thanksgiving, some about turkeys and fall, and a few easier ones that the kids can answer too. If you have younger kids playing, put them on teams with older kids or adults.
You can keep score and have a winner at the end, or just read the questions and let everyone yell out their guesses.
Thanksgiving Candy Dice Game
Put a bowl of candy in the middle of the table and give everyone a few pieces to start.
Each number on the die gets a different rule. You might have to take a piece from the middle, give candy to the person on your left, give some to the person on your right, put one back, or keep everything you have.
Keep passing the die around and see who ends up with the most candy.
You can play with wrapped chocolates, candy corn, M&Ms, or whatever you already have around.
Thanksgiving Family Scavenger Hunt
A scavenger hunt isn’t just for the kids. Make the clues a little harder and let everyone play.
Have people look for things around the house like an old family photo, something orange, a Thanksgiving decoration, something that starts with T, a football, something that smells good, or an item that’s older than they are.
You could play individually, but teams are more fun when you have different ages. Pair the kids with adults and see which team can finish first.
Thanksgiving Think Fast
Give everyone a category and a short amount of time to come up with three things that fit it.
Try categories like:
Thanksgiving foods
Types of pie
Things you’re thankful for
Fall activities
Things that are orange
Thanksgiving traditions
Things you eat with gravy
Give everyone around 30 seconds for each round. The pressure of trying to think of three really simple things in a short amount of time somehow makes your brain forget everything you’ve ever known about Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving Finish the Phrase
For this game, one person secretly finishes a Thanksgiving-related word or phrase and everyone else tries to guess what they wrote.
If the word is pumpkin, they might write pie. For sweet, they might write potato. For apple, they could write cider.
Anyone who writes the same answer gets a point.
Switch who chooses the answers each round so everyone gets a chance to try to fool the rest of the family.
What’s on Your Phone?
If you have older kids, teens, and adults playing, this one is really easy because everyone already has what they need.
Make a list of things people might have on their phones and give each one a different number of points.
Maybe they get points for having a Thanksgiving photo, a recipe saved, an orange app icon, a family group chat, a food picture from this week, or a picture from last Thanksgiving.
Everyone goes through their phone and adds up their points. Whoever has the most at the end wins.
Thanksgiving Fact or Fiction
Read a Thanksgiving statement and have everyone decide whether they think it’s true or false.
Everyone can write down their answer, call it out, or move to opposite sides of the room depending on their choice.
Don’t reveal the answer until everyone has picked. It gets a lot more entertaining when half the family is completely confident about an answer and turns out to be wrong.
Thanksgiving Family Olympics
If your family gets competitive, turn several smaller Thanksgiving games into one big competition.
Split everyone into teams and choose a few challenges. You could have a cup-stacking race, turkey toss, trivia round, scavenger hunt, or even something ridiculous like seeing who can waddle across the room with a balloon between their knees.
Give points for each game and add everything up at the end.
The prize doesn’t have to be anything big. First choice of dessert is enough motivation for some families.
Thanksgiving A-Z Race
Give everyone a piece of paper with the alphabet written down the side. The goal is to think of a Thanksgiving or fall word for as many letters as possible before time runs out.
Some letters will be really easy. Then everyone gets to Q and suddenly realizes this game is much harder than it looked.
When time is up, compare answers. You can give one point for every answer or only count words nobody else wrote.
Make Thanksgiving Easier with Printable Family Games
If you’d rather have the games ready to go instead of making them all yourself, I put together a Thanksgiving Family Games Printable Bundle with over 20 printable games and activities you can have ready before Thanksgiving.
You don’t have to print everything in the bundle. Pick a couple that fit the people coming to your Thanksgiving and keep another one or two ready in case everyone wants to keep playing.
Thanksgiving Guessing Game
Fill a clear jar with something small like candy corn, chocolates, mini marshmallows, or even little fall candies.
Put the jar somewhere everyone can see it and have each person write down how many pieces they think are inside.
You can leave this one out all day so people can make their guesses whenever they want. Before everyone leaves, count everything and see who came the closest.
Letting the winner take home the jar makes it even easier because now you don’t have to figure out what to do with all that candy.
Thanksgiving Riddles
Riddles are good to save for later in the day when everyone has eaten and nobody really wants to get up.
Read one at a time and give everyone a chance to guess. You can split into teams, keep individual scores, or not bother keeping score at all.
This is another one where the wrong answers can end up being funnier than the actual answer.
Games to Play at Thanksgiving Dinner
If you don’t want everyone getting up and running around the house, stick with games you can play right at the table.
This or That, trivia, riddles, Fact or Fiction, Finish the Phrase, and Think Fast can all work without turning Thanksgiving dinner into complete chaos.
You could even put one game at each place setting so there’s something to do while everyone is waiting for dinner to start.
Choosing Thanksgiving Games for the Whole Family
When you have little kids, teenagers, parents, and grandparents together, not every game is going to work equally well for everyone.
I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Pair younger kids with adults for the harder word games and trivia, then mix in games like This or That, scavenger hunts, and guessing games where anyone can play.
You really only need a few good games. Pick one that gets everyone talking, one that gets people moving, and one you can play around the table. That gives you plenty to pull out throughout the day without making Thanksgiving feel like one giant scheduled family game night.
