For this year's Thanksgiving drop-in craft, we made turkey puppets. This was a perfect craft with minimal prep for such a big turnout.
The kids loved being able to play with their puppets after they made them and enjoyed the added benefit of coloring pages and bookmarks. The older kids took their time adding more variety to their turkeys and they all turned out unique.
I heard a lot of cute gobbling!
For our short storytime week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to do a food/sharing/Thanksgiving theme and it worked out great. For my storytime, I focused more on food books and sharing and this turned out to be one of my favorite storytimes of the fall sessions.
We read a total of three books together, used the flannel board two times, sang a song together, and made our craft.
I ended up reading How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen for my first book. The group loved this book and weren't distracted the whole time.
Our first activity was counting shape cookies on the flannel board. I handed out different cookies and they each had a chance to put theirs on the board. Then we went over each cookie's shape and color and counted each one.
The next book I read was Who Put the Cookies in the Cookie Jar? by George Shannon. This is different from the classic everyone knows, but shows all what it takes and who it takes to make one cookie and went perfectly well with the sharing and community table theme.
For our next activity, I thought we could add turkey feathers to our flannel turkey. It was another opportunity for them to interact with the flannel board while we counted and went over our colors.
The final book of the night was Dim Sum for Everyone! by Grace Lin. A great, short book to incorporate a different culture into the mix.
After we had our book fix, and boy did they do wonderful with their attention spans, we sang "If You're Happy and You Know It" and then I explained our craft.
We decorated construction paper cookies using cut out circles and black paint for chocolate chips. We also wrote what we were thankful for on the back and turned a few of our cookies into the cookie jar and kept the rest to take home.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Gobble, gobble! It was time to celebrate Thanksgiving and what better way to celebrate then with a turkey craft.
I decided to do a combination of coloring and piecing together a turkey and took ideas from multiple turkey crafts. I got most of my inspiration from this turkey craft.
We made the turkey legs using the strips of paper and instead colored our turkey body so the group would be able to decorate theirs any way they liked. I cut out some feet instead of shoes and we were good to get crafty!
I misplaced the craft picture because of all the holiday bustle, but you can use your imagination on how it turned out.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I always enjoy putting on a Thanksgiving storytime because of the silly turkey stories and the lesson of giving thanks to all the good things we have in life.
After we followed along to the bean bag song, we started reading There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey! by Lucille Colandro. I have fond memories of reading these books when I was younger so I enjoy reading them out loud to my groups when I can. They can be a bit long, but usually captures their attention.
For our first activity, we added different colored turkey feathers to our flannel turkey. The group listened very well for their colors and always enjoy interacting with the flannel board.
Next, we read Run Turkey, Run! by Diane Mayr. I like incorporating this book into storytime because every group seems to enjoy saying, "run turkey, run!" It makes for a fun time!
For another activity, I tried something new because I needed a movement activity to keep this energetic group focused. We did the Turkey Hokey Pokey! Boy, did we get silly with this one. Everybody was laughing when we waddled our behinds. This was easy for the group to follow with it up on the projector screen.
And thanks to getting some antsy feelings out, we were able to read two more books together, Thanksgiving for Emily Ann by Teresa Johnston and Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes. Both of these books allowed me to get the message of being thankful in storytime.
For our craft, we made a construction paper turkey and used old book pages for the body. This was a very cute and simple craft!
Happy Thanksgiving!
