What To Do

Step 1: Spend a few hours with your preschooler taking a nature walk in the local park. Look for pine cones, colorful leaves, nuts or berries of any kind (make sure your child knows not to eat them), and fresh flowers that you can dry out when you get home.

Step 2: Spray a little glitter on a few of the findings to add a little sparkle -- but just a hint and let dry for about an hour or so.

Step 3: Arrange your findings in a pretty basket and tie a ribbon around the basket to add some color.

Step 4: Add one or two scented pine cones into the batch for a little fragrance.

What You Need -- The Placemats That Double As Place Cards

Brown, orange, yellow and white pieces of construction paper

Clear contact paper

Dried leaves from outside

Markers

Old photos from everyone attending

School glue

Harvest or Thanksgiving stickers

What To Do

Step 1: If you already don't have them, get old or childhood photos of everyone in attendance. If you don't have them, ask guests to please them ahead of time -- and remind them they will be used in a preschool activity.

Step 2: Glue the pictures and leaves in a creative manner on the construction paper. Add stickers or draw similar items on the placemat.

Step 3: Cover the placemats with Contact paper and trim the edges nicely.

Step 4: Have your preschooler set the placemats on the table and when everyone arrives, they will have a great time finding which place to be seated by looking at their old or childhood photos. Your guests can also take these home with them, as they do wipe off easily.

What You Need -- The Napkin Rings

Orange, yellow or brown pipe cleaners

Several fake bush branches or silk craft flowers

What To Do

Step 1: Twist the pipe cleaner around the branches.

Step 2: Twist a knot at the end.

Step 3: Fit nicely around napkin and place on table.

More Thanksgiving Preschool Activities

The Giving Thanks Box

Everyone can enjoy this preschool activity that allows everyone to share what they are most thankful for on this special day. Remind your guests to bring a special item for which they are most thankful.

Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

Similar to a traditional "I Spy" game or scavenger hunt, this holiday preschool activity allows one or more children to keep busy during a long festive day. No reading is involve

Helpful Tips for Parents

• Connect activities to real life: cooking math, laundry color sorting, grocery store counting. Embedded learning is the most transferable kind.

• Rotate activities every few weeks rather than making everything available at once. Novelty dramatically increases engagement and play depth.

• Allow enough time. Preschoolers need 20–40 minutes to reach deep play in any activity. Rushing to the next thing prevents the richest developmental work.

• Keep supplies accessible at child height so your preschooler can initiate activities independently — self-initiated play delivers the strongest developmental benefits.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are screens acceptable as a preschool activity?

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends limiting screen-based media to 1 hour per day of high-quality, co-viewed content for children aged 2–5, and avoiding screens except video-calling for children under 2. The quality of content and whether a parent is watching and discussing together matters enormously — passive, commercial, or violent screen content has negative effects; educational co-viewed content has minimal harm. Screens are not a substitute for the physical, social, and creative activities that develop preschool brains.

Related reading: See also our pretend play guide and our sorting activities for more ideas on this topic.

🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🧠 Executive Function — Planning an activity, following multi-step directions, and seeing a project through to completion builds the executive function skills — working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control — that are the strongest predictors of school success.
• 🏃 Gross Motor Development — Large-movement activities develop the coordination, balance, and muscle strength that underpin physical confidence and school-readiness fitness.
• 🧩 Problem Solving — Working through a challenge — figuring out how pieces fit, how to balance a stack, or how to make something work — develops the perseverance and logical reasoning skills children use across every learning domain.
• 🤝 Social Skills — Activities done with others — siblings, classmates, or parents — teach children how to take turns, negotiate, collaborate, and read social cues that form the basis of healthy relationships.

Everybody has a different idea as to what constitutes a great Thanksgiving dinner. Many families either celebrate their own traditions or ones that are new each year. This preschool activity helps create a new Thanksgiving tradition by allowing the children to create, choose and decorate the Thanksgiving table including the centerpiece, placemats, napkin rings and place cards.

What You Need -- The Centerpiece

Miscellaneous leaves, nuts, etc. found outdoors

A small basket

Ribbon in harvest colors

Spray glitter

Scented pine cones