Gobble-Gobble Turkey Crafts!
With Thanksgiving just a little more than a week away, here is a fun list of crafts that you can use with young children. Some of them are very simple and some are a little more involved; however, you can always adjust the level of difficulty based upon the needs of the child. On October 21st, I did a post highlighting fall crafts and several readers wrote in with some great ideas, so it may also be helpful to look back at that post to jump-start your creative thinking!
Below is a list of Thanksgiving-themed art-based speech and language therapy ideas....Enjoy!
Coloring/Painting Basic Thanksgiving Pictures - This is a really simple activity that is a great starting point for children just learning to how to sit, focus and complete an activity. You can use crayons, markers, paint, do-a-dot markers or any other medium you can think of. I really like the website listed below - it has a wide variety of basic coloring book pages for all holidays and seasons of the year. Click below to visit their Thanksgiving coloring book pages: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/thanksgiving/mthanksgivingposter.html
Turkey, Acorns and Pilgrims, Oh My! Get creative using Thanksgiving themes!
- Make turkey, acorn and pilgrim-shaped cookies (or whatever Thanksgiving/fall shapes you have!)
- Use cinnamon-scented play doh ~ use the same cookie-cutters listed above! Here is a link describing about 10 different ways to make homemade play doh: http://www.simplymoms.com/art/playdoh.html
- Use ink pad stamps with Thanksgiving day themes
- Paint pictures using Thanksgiving rubber stamps
Native American Noodle Necklace - This is one of those simple activities that all kids love - painting noodles and stringing them together to make a necklace. This is a great way to practice color words and fine motor tasks.
Native American Feather Headband - What's Thanksgiving without feathers?! Here's a great activity that can be made with just construction paper, feathers and glue or staples to hold the feathers in place. Using feathers makes this a great sensory activity and kids will enjoy wearing the finished product!
Tissue Paper Turkey - This is the good ol' fashioned trace-the-child's-hand-to-make-a-turkey-shape activity. Of course the head in the child's thumb and the feathers are the other four fingers. The only difference is the turkey's feathers are tissue paper strips in yellow, gold, orange, red and brown. This is a great sensory activity because it includes glue and the fun feeling of tissue paper.
Hope today's post has helped to get those creative juices flowing....enjoy making your Thanksgiving Day projects!!