For your Thanksgiving dinner table, a cute way to get your children involved in decorating the table is to let them make placemats and place cards showing where everyone should sit. These can be made in many different ways including using many of the crafts that we mentioned above.

For example, when we made the Indian and Pilgrim handprints, turn those into placemats by putting the handprints on paper. Then let your child decorate, as they like with crayons, markers, stickers, or whatever they want.

If you are fortunate enough to own a home laminating machine, that makes making placemats easier and food friendly! They can be purchased quite inexpensively at local discount stores, and if you are a big crafter, it can be very useful and pay for itself in no time!

You can also go online and print out coloring pages for your child to color and make into a placemat. You can find tons of web sites that have Thanksgiving coloring pages available for download.

With place cards, all you need is some construction paper or poster board and some creativity. Cut the paper into 5” x 7” pieces and then fold in half. Have you or your child – depending on their ability – write down the name of a guest. Then, around the name, have them decorate the place card with turkey stamps, stickers, or just fun designs.

Debra McDonough
Wrapsody Designs