This Thanksgiving turkey craft is perfect for your kindergarten or first-grade classroom! It combines fine motor practice with beginning writing skills. It looks great on a bulletin board and is a fun keepsake for parents as well!
Preparing the Thanksgiving Turkey Craft
You can print the pages for this Thanksgiving turkey craft on colored paper or white paper. If you print it on white paper, the students will obviously need to color each piece.
This craft has a lot of cutting and gluing components, so I suggest running your copies on colored paper so this activity doesn’t take forever : )
When I’m doing a craft project that has many pieces, I like to use Ziploc baggies to organize the materials for each student. (I reuse these bags for different art projects.) Below is a picture of some of my students prepping baggies for the rest of the class.
I am a HUGE proponent of fostering independence in the classroom! Kindergarten students can do SO MUCH more than a lot of people give them credit for. If you explicitly teach them how to do things they can be such a big help to you!
Generating Ideas
Before we get started on the craft project we talk about what it means to be thankful. We talk about taking a step back and realizing all of the wonderful things we have in our lives.
We generate a list of things that we are thankful for that we can later use on our craft. As you can see from the picture, in the past, I have written the words they come up with on the whiteboard and then drawn a HORRIBLE picture next to the word so they would remember what the word is : )
I just updated this freebie to include some picture cards that you can add next to the words, just in case you are as bad at drawing as I am!
You can use these cards in the following way:
- Tape the cards to the whiteboard and sound out the words together. Leave them up on the whiteboard while the students are completing the craft.
- Have the students come to the whiteboard and sound out the words for the class. Make it a practice to sound out, not worrying about the correct spelling. Once students start the craft, erase the words but keep the cards up on the board or pocket chart and have students sound the words out on their own.
- Put the cards in a pocket chart as idea examples and let them sound out the words on their own as they complete the craft.
Completing the Thanksgiving Turkey Craft
As I said before, this craft gives the students a lot of fine motor practice. Students cut out the feathers and write something they are thankful for on each feather.
They then cut out the rest of the body pieces and glue the craft together.
Once the craft is dry, just staple it up onto your bulletin board, and you are good to go (at least for another month : )
If you would like a FREE copy of this thanksgiving turkey craft, just follow the link below.
Thankful Turkey Craft
You can find many more Thanksgiving resources and ideas on my website to keep your students engaged during the Fall season!
You can also find Thanksgiving resources to help grow students’ academic skills while celebrating the season below!
- Thanksgiving Math Sensory Bin Centers
- Thanksgiving Phonics Sensory Bin Centers
- November Early Finisher Task Cards
- November Boom Cards for Kindergarten
