Crafting Kindness: Thanksgiving Edition

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I got word back from the Child Life Specialist at the children’s hospital that the Halloween craft kits were a hit! So we are going to move forward with the Thanksgiving crafts that I had planned. I definitely went a little lighter on this one because we have been prepping the Christmas crafts. There are a lot of Christmas crafts I have been wanting to do. But anyways, most of these Thanksgiving crafts can be done from really young ages! My 2 year old loved doing the beads!

Thankful Turkey- We do this craft every year. We usually just make one for our family and the kids add one feather each day of what they are grateful for. As our family gets bigger, our turkey’s feathers have really expanded! I think it is a great reminder for the kids during this exciting season of getting candy and presents to remember what is truly important: Being kind to others. So I usually just assemble to turkey body myself, but your child could definitely do this on their own! And then we cut out feathers. I don’t have a template for this, I really just do 1.5 inch strips for the feathers and curve both sides at the end to make a point. The rest of this is all just eyeballed. I cut out two white ovals for eyes and two black circles for the pupils. Then I cut out an oval that is fatter on one side for the beak out of orange paper. And some feet. The red dangle part is probably the hardest shape because it just curves around the beak. Maybe I will have to work on a template sometime, but it doesn’t need to be perfect! We try to start on the first day of November and we add a feather each day. It has become a joke in our family to see how long it takes for Mom and Dad to make it on the list. Last year we didn’t make it up until the day before Thanksgiving! But this year, thanks to our 2 year old’s limited vocabulary, we made it up by day 2 and 3!

2. Free Printable Turkey Hat- The only downside to this turkey hat is that you have to enter your email to receive the free printable. I hate stuff like that. But it did come through my email and I like this one better than any others I found! The kids can color these and cut them out! And we just used tape to put it together and tape it at the right size. We did print on cardstock which made them a lot sturdier. Here is the link to the blog that has the free printable! She has lots of other fun stuff on her blog that we have used, so it is a pretty good blog to be subscribed to!

3. Indian Corn: This one was a crowd favorite. We had my nieces and nephews over the day that I was prepping the hospital kits and making the example crafts and they all loved this one from age 2-11. You start by taking 4 pipe cleaners and place one vertically in front of you. Then wrap one perpendicular around the center so it comes out even on both sides (like an x shape) continue to add them in the middle in this madder until you get all 4 wrapped in the middle looking like a snowflake. Add beads to each end coming out. You want to leave at least 1-1.5 inches beadless so you can twist it together at the end. It wouldn’t hurt to put a little rubber elastic around the end as well after you have twisted it to stop the beads from coming off. We orders just a basic bead mix and sorted out the fall colors. But it only allowed us to make about 4 cobs. So I had to buy more and I just went with this autumn mix from amazon so I didn’t have to sort them.