These activities will make you feel closer to family during a virtual Thanksgiving | Parenting

Prepare your Bloody Mary’s or Shirley Temples together virtually and offer up a gratitude toast. Feeling fancy? Many specialty bottle shops — like Old City’s Art in the Age — offer cocktail-making kits with everything you need to make a perfect Martini or an Old Fashioned. Kits come with glasses, bitters and of course, the preferred alcohol. Order for curbside pickup and deliver it to family members, or order in advance for Christmas and your spirits can be shipped statewide. If you want a simpler (or cheaper) approach, make a kit up yourself or just share a YouTube video so everyone can try following the same instructions.

Picture it: Your parents, your siblings and their crew, a few cousins and yes, you are sitting at dinner tables with similar touches. “You won’t help but feel connected,” said Halle Adelman, an elementary school teacher and author of Way Past Mad, a children’t book that helps little ones deal with big feelings. “And it’s a good way to get kids involved in a creative project.” There are many ways to introduce festive elements . Perhaps everyone makes a cornucopia for a centerpiece, or agrees on the same deep burgundy or pumpkin orange hues for the table. Maybe in a pre-dinner art session members makd themed placemats. “They don’t have to all look exactly alike, but there is a nice continuity of expression,” Adelman said. “And that helps emphasize the familial bond.”

If there is any year to pray together, it’s 2020. Ask someone to lead the family in grace at the beginning of dinner. Then go across the table or the screen and ask each participant to share what they are grateful for. “In a year that we have lost so much, we should try to express gratitude at the very least for being alive and together, no matter how far apart we are, said University of Pennsylvania chaplain, Rev. Charles Howard. It’s also a nice touch, Howard said, to thank people you love just for being who they are.