Thanksgiving Craft Roundup

Thanksgiving is upon us, and although most adults enjoy waiting around to eat, eating, watching football, eating more, and chit-chatting..it can be a potentially tedious affair for young ones with nothing to do before or after the big meal.  With a simple google search I have found some fun ideas for crafts and learning activities to help the kids stay busy and enjoy their turkey day.

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The glittery pinecones are fun name-card place holders, as are the pinecone-turkeys ☺

Another idea that caught my eye was to use fabric markers to trace the children’s hands and draw a turkey face on the thumb to create a table-cloth for the kid’s table with each child’s name and age next to their turkey.  You could also do this with fabric napkins, pot-holders, aprons, t-shirts or onsies. Using permanent markers and fabric markers can be potentially messy, depending on the age of a child, and it does help to soak the item in vinegar and wash it alone the first time so that it won’t bleed onto other fabric.

I also love these Thanksgiving and Autumn themed learning activities which I have found at the fabulous resource of the teachers corner on Lakeshore Learning’s website.  They have many lesson plans and activities for all ages. My favorites are the Pilgrim Patterns activity and the Thanksgiving phonics activity, because they are just right for Nora’s age, and we  plan to do these.  I love their free craft tutorials and lessons plans.

You can copy this address into your browser to see these and other great activities:

http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/teachers_corner/teachersCorner.jsp?f=hpsb

nativeAmericanPictograph

mayflower

pilgrims

thanksgivingPhonicsPuzzles

turkeycolorcraft

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!….gobble..gobble..

Thanksgiving Turkey Pinata

When I was growing up, we used to meet up with my mother’s entire family and all of our cousins on her side at my aunt’s home for Thanksgiving. As youngsters, what we looked forward to the most was our annual kid-tradition of making and breaking a turkey pinata. Even with very little preparation, a turkey pinata can easily be whipped up by using a brown paper grocery bag (or several bags layered for strength) as the body, then stapling it shut with the candy inside and making the turkey head and feathers out of construction paper.  Some years my siblings and I would make a paper-mache turkey body for our pinata, which is an easy, fun, but messy option. I have continued this tradition with youth groups at church, and teens enjoy it too. Here is a photo of those good old turkey pinata days in the 80s.

Of course it is wisest NOT to use a real baseball bat, but instead a nerf bat or soft/plastic option. This activity could be dangerous in a small space, so proceed with caution.

Autumn Art

Although many people are bundling up for a white winter by now, it has finally become semi-colorful around here as far as Autumn goes in Pasadena, CA.  A change of season seems like a great time to learn more about weather and the four seasons.  It’s all about weather and changing seasons for us this week with library books, crafts, and music. Here are two simple craft ideas for Fall that utilize cutting, glueing, painting and budding design skills.

1. Leaf Mosaic: Direct your child to cut out strips of paper in the colors that you want to use. (My three year old was better able to do this by cutting along lines drawn onto the construction paper as a guide.) Then they can snip off pieces of the strip in different shapes and at different angles for the pieces of the mosaic and glue them to the leaf form. You can print off one or both of the leaf forms below, or just draw your own.

leaf1     leaf2

2. Paint over leaf outlines or just paint free-form leaves in Autumn colors.

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