What do you look forward to the most when Thanksgiving rolls around? The parades? The football? The food? What about the family? Thanksgiving offers the perfect setting and days of free time to nurture your child’s relationship with her family members and her community. As the holidays draw near, take heed of this list of 10 ideas for outings with grandchildren and pass it on to your parents and in-laws. Allowing children to bond one-on-one with their grandparents is essential to forming close familial relationships that they’ll treasure later in life. If your parents are traveling, Nancy Parode, Senior Travel Guide, has some holiday travel tips that are great no matter the season. Keeping your child involved and engaged in the world around her is just as important. Jennifer Wolf, Guide to Single Parents, offers a few suggestions on ways to volunteer with kids that are perfect for this time of year. Not quite what you're looking for? The Guide to Kids’ Clubs, Heidi Coghlan, has several more ideas for you to consider, like pampering pets at a local shelter, sponsoring a family in need, and decorating your town for the season…with permission, of course!

As the weather turns colder, it’s time to turn up the heat in the kitchen. Why not bring the kids with you? Baking with children, whether they’re barely old enough to stir cookie dough or busy making cupcakes with only your supervision, is a surefire way to get them involved with family traditions. As you mix, measure, and stir, you can share memories of your own childhood and build treasure troves of good times for your kids to store away themselves. The kitchen is also a natural learning environment. Not only will you be teaching your kids a valuable skill, but you can also transform basic baking actions, like recipe reading, into educational activities. Cooking is a life skill they’ll need in the future; starting early will make them safe and comfortable in the kitchen as they grow older and begin to take care of themselves. As Beverly Hernandez, About.com’s Guide to Homeschooling, tells us, you can also use baking to teach kids mathematics principles. When you need to select a certain sized dish for baking a cake, teach your children about diameter and circumference. If you’re packing up treats for a holiday delivering, let them figure out how big the container needs to be. As you go through the baking process, you can also teach your kids about the science of baking. Let About.com’s Guide to Busy Cooks help you along with the hows and whys of baking. Plus: Read the Top 10 Reasons to Get Kids Cooking from Stephanie Gallagher, Guide to Cooking for Kids.

In the weeks before Halloween, it’s often the pumpkins that garner attention instead of the costumes. Before the kids pull out the newspaper, spoons, and knives, take a few minutes to brush up on the process of crafting a perfectly affordable and delightfully spooktacular jack-o-lantern. Watch a video that shows you how to carve a pumpkin from beginning to end. Then, instead of investing in a costly pumpkin-carving kit, check out the free patterns provided by About.com’s Guide to Crafts. Choose one or let your kids’ imaginations run wild as they design their own. You can even throw a pumpkin decorating party!

Schools are germ breeding grounds, so it’s only a matter of time before sniffles and sore throats are passed from one grubby hand to the next. It’s time for the age-old question: should you send your tot packing with tissues and a pat on the head, or is he too sick for school? To get ready for cold and flu season, learn when you should take your child to the doctor, build a flu season tool kit, and find a flu shot with the help of About.com’s Cold and Flu Guide.