5 Creative Ideas to Celebrate Thanksgiving This Year!

Thanksgiving is upon us, and you know what that means! It’s time to get together with family and give thanks for what we have. Most importantly, it’s time to be thankful for the loved ones in our life, and of course, our senior loved ones.

Chances are, your client, parent, or older aunt or uncle spent their entire life preparing an amazing Thanksgiving feast for their families, which may be difficult for them to do now. The holidays can also be a somber time for seniors, as it’s tough to have to process that not only are we older, but that the kids are all grown up and extended family may not stay in touch as often as you’d like.

Here are 10 ways you can help the seniors in your live keep these traditions alive!

1. Make a Giving Tree!

One way to immerse yourselves during this special holiday and feel the love is to literally write down all of the things you and your love one are thankful for! Buy some colorful paper, grab some tree branches or decorate fake branches that you can cut to size, and attach each memento to the branches like below!

2. Draw hand turkeys!

This activity is perfect, especially if your loved one’s grandchildren or even great-grandchildren will be visiting! Grab a bunch of construction paper and crayons or markers and the rest is history – just outline your hand and later, decorate and color in the turkey as you like! Check out a step-by-step guide here!

3. Write Thank You Letters

Chances are your loved one loves to write letters (as we all should!) This year, why not buy yourselves some Thanksgiving-themed stationary and write notes to the people you’re most thankful for. It could even be members of their church group, community center, or repairman!
This could also be a great time to get a head-start on Christmas cards if you’re up for it!

4. Host a Friendsgiving

Hosting Thanksgiving and preparing dishes for your family can be extremely stressful, especially if you have a lots of mouths to feed. Chances are you might be taking your client to their children’s house for Thanksgiving, or, if its not in the books this year, be sure you have your own dinner and invite your client’s friends, family and even neighbors to bring their own dishes – potluck style! Above all, make sure your client takes part in the festivities and enjoys a traditional Thanksgiving feast.

5. Make crafts for Thanksgiving dinner guests

Speaking of Thanksgiving dinner, one thing you and your client could do together before heading to your family feast Thursday night is make custom place cards for everyone in attendance. You can make them out of construction paper and hand-write their names on each, or get creative and buy a bag of acorns (unless you’ve like to find them outside) to which you can tie each tag to. Here is another fun idea that you can try!