Thanksgiving games for family: 15 table games for all ages

Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November, which puts it on November 26 this year, and the day has a shape every host knows: a long wait while the turkey cooks, a long meal, then a slow evening on the couch. The best Thanksgiving games for family fit those moments instead of fighting them. Below are fifteen of them, grouped by when you play and who is playing, with the player count and what you need for each.

Which Thanksgiving game fits your group?

Start here if you only have a minute. The table lists all fifteen games in the order of the day. Five of them are free printables from our catalogue; the others are traditional games that need nothing but paper, a deck of cards or a die.

#	Game	When	Players	What you need
1	Thanksgiving word search	While the turkey cooks	1 each	Our printable
2	Thanksgiving pie maze	While the turkey cooks	1 each	Our printable
3	Indoor scavenger hunt	While the turkey cooks	1–6	A printed list
4	Thanksgiving bingo	Between courses	Up to 20 cards	Our printable
5	Gratitude prompts	At the table	Everyone	The picker below
6	Twenty Questions	At the table	2+	Nothing
7	Telephone	At the table	3+	Nothing
8	Heads, Bodies and Legs	Kids’ table	2–6	Paper, pencils
9	Dots and boxes	Kids’ table	2	Paper or our sheet
10	Hangman	Kids’ table	2–8	Paper or our sheet
11	Spoons	After dinner	3–13	Cards, spoons
12	Charades	After dinner	4+ in two teams	Slips of paper
13	Quick on the Draw	After dinner	4–10	Score sheet, paper
14	60-second challenges	After dinner	Any	A timer
15	Pig	After pie	2–8	One die, paper

Nov 26Thanksgiving 2026always the fourth Thursday of November

15games in this guidesorted by moment of the day

20unique bingo cardsin our free Thanksgiving bingo PDF

3Thanksgiving printablesbingo, word search and maze

What games can you play while the turkey cooks?

This is the hardest stretch for children: the house smells of food and dinner is hours away. Quiet paper games work best, because the living room is full and the kitchen is off-limits.

1. Thanksgiving word search. Twenty words, from turkey to cornucopia, hidden in a 15 × 15 grid. Our Thanksgiving word search is pitched at ages 8 to 12, with words running across, down and diagonally but never backwards, and the answer key on page 2.

2. Thanksgiving pie maze. A round maze where the pumpkin pie travels from the oven to the table. Our Thanksgiving maze has medium-width paths for ages 8 to 12; younger children can follow one wall with a finger all the way to the table.

3. Indoor scavenger hunt. Children search the house for “something green” or “something that sparkles” and tick it off a list. The indoor scavenger hunt from Play Party Plan is free; the creator emails the PDF when you sign up. Keep the kitchen out of bounds.

Maze · free PDFThanksgiving mazePie from oven to table: a 20 × 20 round maze, solution on page 2.Medium · Ages 9–13 · 2 pages→

Which games work at the dinner table with only paper?

At the table, the rule is simple: nobody gets up, and the game can stop the moment the gravy arrives. That rules out anything with a board or many pieces.

4. Thanksgiving bingo. One card each and one caller who draws words from a bowl. Our Thanksgiving bingo cards come as twenty unique cards built from 36 words, including turkey, cranberry sauce, wishbone and nap, plus calling cards to cut out. A round takes about five minutes, which fits nicely between the main course and dessert.

5. Gratitude prompts. Go round the table and answer one question each. It is the gentlest way to get the “what are you thankful for” moment without putting anyone on the spot. Use the picker below, or edit the list to add your own family questions.

Tool

Gratitude and conversation prompts

One choice per line (edit me)Name one small thing that made you happy this year. Who at this table taught you something? What was it? What is your favourite Thanksgiving dish, and why? Describe the best meal you have ever eaten. What is one thing you are looking forward to next year? Which family story should everyone here know? What is a skill you learned this year? If you could invite anyone to dinner, who would it be? What is the funniest thing that happened to you this fall? Thank someone at the table for something specific.Pick a question

6. Twenty Questions. One player thinks of something; the others ask up to twenty yes-or-no questions to guess it. The game is old: the writer Hannah More recorded teaching it at a London dinner party in the 1780s. Limit the answers to things on the table or Thanksgiving foods to keep it quick for young players.

7. Telephone. The first player whispers a sentence to their neighbour, who whispers it on, and the last player says it aloud. The joke is how far the message drifts. It needs three players or more, and a long table makes it funnier.

What games keep the kids’ table busy?

The kids’ table needs games that two or three children can run themselves, with no adult refereeing. Pencil games are ideal: they are quiet, cheap, and nobody cries over a lost piece.

8. Heads, Bodies and Legs. One child draws a head at the top of a sheet, folds it over, and passes it on; the next draws a body, the next the legs. Unfold for a ridiculous creature. It is a children’s version of the surrealists’ “exquisite corpse”, itself based on an older parlour game called consequences. This Heads, Bodies and Legs sheet has the fold lines marked. Try a “turkey edition”: every part must be a turkey part.

9. Dots and boxes. Two players take turns joining dots; whoever closes a box writes their initial in it and plays again. Our dots and boxes rules come with a printable sheet of four grids.

10. Hangman. One child picks a Thanksgiving word, the others guess letters. Agree on a word list first (pie, pilgrim, harvest) so the youngest players have a chance. Our hangman rules page has a sheet with six ready-made games, and tic-tac-toe fills any gap in between.

Word search · free PDFThanksgiving word searchTwenty Thanksgiving words, never backwards, answer key on page 2.Medium · Ages 9–13 · 2 pages→

What are good Thanksgiving games for adults and Friendsgiving?

Once the plates are cleared, adults and teens want something fast, loud and easy to join. These games explain in under a minute, and they double as the best Friendsgiving games because they mix people who have never met.

11. Spoons. Players pass cards round the circle as fast as they can; whoever collects four of a kind grabs a spoon, and everyone else scrambles for one. There is always one spoon too few. Our Spoons rules cover 3 to 13 players with one deck.

12. Charades. Write Thanksgiving words and phrases on slips (carving the turkey, the parade, falling asleep on the couch), split into two teams, and mime without speaking. The charade started out as a written riddle, popular in 18th-century France, and only later became the acted-out version we play today.

13. Quick on the Draw. A team drawing game in the Pictionary style: one player draws, their team guesses. This Quick on the Draw score sheet has five categories per card for 4 to 10 players.

14. 60-second challenges. One player, one minute, one task: name as many side dishes as you can, stack ten plastic cups and unstack them, or list every guest’s middle name. Use the timer below and let the losing team clear the dessert plates.

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One-minute challenge timer

1:00

30s60s90s120sStartReset

For a larger Friendsgiving, set up three tables of four and play Bunco, the dice game designed for a party of twelve.

Which quiet games work after pie?

Late in the evening, the energy drops and someone always falls asleep. Quiet games let the people still awake keep playing at the table.

15. Pig. Roll one die as many times as you like and add up the points, but a 1 wipes out your turn. First to 100 wins. The rules of Pig fit on a napkin, and the push-your-luck tension keeps even tired players watching.

Then there is the wishbone. Two people pull the dried bone from the turkey and the one left with the bigger piece makes a wish. The custom goes back to the early 17th century, when the bone was called a “merrythought”; the word “wishbone” is only recorded from 1860.

Or close the evening with five questions of Thanksgiving trivia, all checked against the National Archives and the sources at the end of this page.

Interactive quiz

Thanksgiving trivia for the table

Five questions. Read them aloud and let the table vote.

Question 1 of 520%

Which free Thanksgiving printables should you download before Thursday?

If you print only three things, make them the three Thanksgiving printables from our catalogue. All three are black and white, print on US Letter or A4, and are free under a Creative Commons licence, so you can print a copy for every guest.

Bingo · free PDFThanksgiving bingo cards20 unique cards, 36 words, calling cards included. Play between courses.Ages 6–8 · 11 pages→

Print the bingo cards on card stock if you want to reuse them next year, and the maze and word search on plain paper. Once the season moves on, our holiday pages cover everything from Christmas to Valentine’s Day.