Thanksgiving after meal activities

November 23, 2019 9:01 PM

Hi! My family is getting together this year and would like to have some sort of craft to make. Challenge: toddler friendly, adult interesting, can go on an airplane after, and is as green/eco friendly as possible. Food is OK so long as it's very low mess (decorating cookies is too much mess)
posted by rebent to Grab Bag (13 answers total)

Origami ornaments from the big sale circulars or wrapping paper or magazine pages.
posted by tipsyBumblebee at 9:05 PM on November 23, 2019 [4 favorites]

You can melt glycerin soap and pour it into soap molds. Small kids can stir in drops of fragrance, glitter, color chips, etc.
posted by mezzanayne at 9:20 PM on November 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

We’re making “thankful tree trunks” out of construction paper that we’ll take home afterwards and tape on the wall and add daily “happy memory leaves” to until ... until whenever. We did it last year for several months and it was fun.
posted by hungrytiger at 9:29 PM on November 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

God's Eyes?
posted by carmicha at 10:14 PM on November 23, 2019

if you celebrate Christmas and don't mind mixing holidays, you could make some pretty gift tags or cards from recycled materials
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 3:39 AM on November 24, 2019 [3 favorites]

You can paint pinecones with peanut/almond butter and roll them in birdseed, to hang outdoors on a tree for winter snacks for the birds (that also look cute like tree ornaments). Or strings of popcorn.
posted by xo at 8:48 AM on November 24, 2019

bit of a stretch in terms of taking it on a plane, but if you did a puzzle there are roll up carriers for the completed puzzle.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:48 AM on November 24, 2019

Duct tape flowers are my go to for things like this. Toddlers will need help. Once you've learned the basics it's easy to make fancier leaves so artsy teens and adults enjoy it too.
posted by selfmedicating at 9:56 AM on November 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Crayola Model Magic is like playdoh that dries really nicely. We made tree decorations one year and it took 10 years for them to finally fall apart. You can press sparkly things and hanging things into it before it dries.
posted by Enid Lareg at 12:02 PM on November 24, 2019

Sonobe module type origami is super fun and the different shapes (cube --> icosahedron) tolerate different levels of folding skill. Toddlers can fold well enough to make pieces that can make a cube, in my experience doing this as a holiday craft. It's also a collective thing since everybody can just make a pile of the pieces, and then the person who has the best hand-eye coordination and patience for fiddly things can actually assemble the pieces together into the complicated shapes while the rest of us make lots of cubes.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:41 PM on November 24, 2019

One year I got wooden doll blanks, and everyone painted their likeness. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest had a lot of fun, and everyone kept theirs afterwards- when I go to my friend's house the still have them on display 10 years later.
posted by momochan at 6:15 PM on November 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

Buy an inexpensive wood jigsaw puzzle (made for toddlers). Should be large pieces, less than 24 pieces.
Spray the face (picture) white or whatever color.
After dinner everyone colors a couple of pieces. On the back they either give thanks for something that happened this year or writes something they’d like to do with the family (‘see the Redwoods’ ‘go to the lake’ restaurant movies fishing etc).

Someone gets to keep the puzzle and sends everyone pics of it.
posted by artdrectr at 10:49 PM on November 24, 2019

Stick cloves in oranges?
posted by Hypatia at 10:34 AM on November 25, 2019