Sweet E and I did several Thanksgiving activities over the last week or so. Keep scrolling to see what we did, or take a look back at previous Thanksgiving themes I did with Honey Pot and Little M&M!
Books
These are the Thanksgiving books we've accumulated over the years. "Turkey Trouble" and "One is a Feast for a Mouse" are the two favorites in this house! But Sweet E is just a toddler, so for now she requested the two lift-the-flap board books over and over!
Pumpkin Pie Playdough
We made a fresh batch of playdough for this week, and it smelled SO GOOD! The recipe:
Mix
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of salt
2 TBSP cream of tartar
2 TBSP vegetable oil
1 TBSP pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup of water
...and stir over medium heat until a dough forms, then knead it for a couple minutes. It was super soft too!
I provided Sweet E with some basic tools, a pumpkin cookie cutter, our Thanksgiving playdough mat, beads and craft sticks.
She cut out a pumpkin first!
She decorated several, and then rolled out snakes for our turkey feathers!
Then, while we were rolling out snakes anyway, she grabbed her plastic knife and practiced her cutting skills!
We made another turkey on our laminated page too, with craft sticks this time!
Then we flipped the page over and played with our empty plate next! We made peas, noodles and of course some slices of turkey!
And then she pretended to eat!
She loooves using this tool, so she made lots and lots more noodles!
And for dessert... pie!
We brought this out again two more times throughout the week. Her favorite thing to do? Make lots and lots of noodles!
Name Turkey
This is a simple gluing activity I set up for Sweet E (please pardon where I erased her actual name).
She just had to match the letters on the cut-out feathers to the ones on the turkey, and glue them on!
Such a simple, but great, name recognition activity! The coloring page of this particular turkey comes from here!
Build-a-Turkey
I found a cute turkey craft at the store, but the felt was too stiff. So I glued together the body pieces, and made my own feathers out of soft felt from my stash. This way Sweet E could build a turkey over and over, and have it stick to the soft background.
Here was her first creation! 😂
She enjoyed this, and did it a few times in a row.
Color Sorting - Turkey Feathers
This is part one of a larger activity. I asked her to sort these stickers onto the four feathers!
She happily obliged!
Feed the Turkey!
Then I used her feathers to create a turkey out of a coffee can. And I provided her with our pom poms and two sets of tongs.
Isn't he cute?
Then she fed the turkey again and again!
She had such fun with this. It entertained her for quite a while.
And she switched tongs, to use the small pair for a small pom pom now and then.
We took this out a couple times during our Thanksgiving week. It was a great grab-and-go activity when she was looking for something to do!
Cranberry Sensory Bin
I offered this to the big kids when they were little too. Something about cranberries in water is so engaging to them! I provided her with two buckets, a ladle and a straining spoon. And she got to work right on the kitchen floor!
Scooping cranberries into the bowls...
Digging her hands into the bucket...notice kitty is curious too!
She was at this for a long time!
And eventually she discovered that she could splash! Good thing we lined the floor with a towel first!
More scooping and pouring...
And finally, she started squeezing them and discovered they made a fun popping noise! This was very satisfying to do, and she did it many times lol.
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Happy Thanksgiving!