We are just a few weeks away from my favorite holiday…..Thanksgiving!  Today our goal is to help our families, teachers and therapists increase their child’s understanding of the people that will be at Thanksgiving.  The more familiar your child is with the people that they will see over Thanksgiving the more likely they are to interact with them.  Here are Five Fun ideas that you can do to help prepare your child: 

• Family Book:  Creating a family book is a great way to work on a variety of skills at any level.  You can make a book with their names and pictures to work on everyone’s names and faces.  You can make a book with their names, pictures, and information you know about them.  Or you can have your child call/email them and interview them to add to their family book. **Be sure to click on the pictures below to see examples of a family book**

• Picture Albums/Videos:  If you have any pictures or videos from last Thanksgiving then reviewing these the week before is a wonderful idea to focus on the people they may see, the names of the people as well as looking back to see what people liked/didn’t like

• Family Go Fish:  If your child is playing Go-Fish, then you can make a family go fish game.  This would be a great game to help your child learn everyone’s names and faces.

• Family Heabanz:  If you have the Hedbanz at home then you can change the game to “Family Hedbanz” by printing out pictures of the family members that you will see over Thanksgiving and practice asking “yes/no” questions about them such as “Are they a boy?”, “Do they like to eat pumpkin pie?”, “Do they have kids?”, and more.  This is a great game to play for you to know how much your child knows about each family member and build on it.

• Family Guess Who:  If you have Guess Who at home then you can change the game to “Family Guess Who” by printing out small pictures of your family members that you will see over Thanksgiving and focus on asking “yes/no” questions about what they look like and what they like such as “Is your person a boy?”, “Does your person wear glasses?”, “Is your person’s favorite color pink?”, “Does your person have a cat?”, and more.

All of these activities are also great to do at the end of Thanksgiving to see what you child has learned about their family/friends.  In addition, they are all great activities to do throughout year to help prepare for any friend/family holiday or party.

We hope that you all have a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

~KidSpeak, LLC