by Dena Bless
Nov. 10, 2025
Are you planning on taking some time off from regular schooling for Thanksgiving? Wondering how to make the time special and meaningful? Here are a few ideas we hope will help you create a blessed time with family and friends over the next few weeks.
Free Resources
Join us and homeschoolers from four other states for the Free Thanksgiving Lesson + Craft webinar about the Mayflower Compact. If you have friends in AZ, ID, OR, or NM, invite them to join in as well. After registering, you will receive an 80+ page PDF with loads of information and ideas for kids of all ages, as well as some templates for the webinar itself.
Family Times
If you’ve had times this year where your schedule ran away from you and you didn’t get all the chances you wanted for fun times together as a family, here’s your chance to make it up. Snuggle together and read through that book you had wanted to share as a family. Do that puzzle or play those games that you didn’t get to do last month.
Thanksgiving can be a wonderful time for creating memories. Instead of pushing everyone out of the kitchen because you have so much to do, open it up and let them in and do things together. Here’s your chance to start teaching the next generation that treasured family recipe. (The recipe at the back of How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World has been a family favorite for more than a dozen years now, and my daughters still make it together when they come home for the holidays.)
Or maybe you don’t have that kind of family background, but you want to create it in your own family. Here are a couple of great places to start looking for some recipes that can become your family favorites that then get passed down through the generations, whether they’re focused on being kid-friendly or from another family.
Even your littles can participate. Use this cookie recipe for your leftover pieces of pie crust dough or these other recipe ideas (your kids will especially like the first one).
Create a Thanksgiving Tree
Hang a drawing or picture of a tree trunk with bare branches.
Cut out leaf shapes or have everyone trace their hands on different autumnal colored pieces of construction paper.
Throughout the next few weeks, have everyone in your family write things they’re thankful for as they think of them and attach them to your tree.
See an example here, as well as other iterations of this idea.
Practice Hospitality
If you’re the one hosting the family meal, let the kids help set the table. Give them a chance to play with colors and patterns and textures and use the nice dishes. (They can also help you wash them afterwards!)
Let them make place cards or napkin rings for your table. They can all be the same, or they can personalize them for each guest and have them become a little keepsake for guests to take home.
Part of hospitality is learning to clean the house and make it welcoming and inviting for guests. Another great learning opportunity.
Have you considered expanding your guest list to invite those from church or your neighborhood that may not have family in the area or a place to go? That’s one of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions. We have wonderful memories of great times with our family and “extended” family/friends. Some would come for several years and form their own friendships! (And they all would have a chance to add to the Thanksgiving Tree as well.)
Whatever traditions you already have or start this year, we hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving. And please know that we here at CHEA are incredibly grateful for you and your support!
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Loving all things autumnal, Dena wants to encourage you to enjoy this bountiful season with your family. Since both her girls are graduated and gone, she’s going to go cuddle up on the couch with a good book by herself and remember fun read-aloud times while homeschooling! She and her husband are the Bay Area/NorCal Regional Advisory Board members, and she is CHEA’s Events Manager as well.
