Turkey Activities for Preschool

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE the fall?  Now that we have wrapped up the sugar rush of Halloween, it is time to move on to another fun holiday-Thanksgiving!  Turkey's are one of my favorite themes during the weeks before the big turkey feast.  There are so many cute hands-on activities that can tie into what is going on in the environment around us!  Think of all the connections children make when they can involve all of their senses.  All of the printables are a part of a cute freebie pack.  Click HERE to check it out!  

My daughter Violet had fun trying out the activities with me.  She is three and knows almost all of her colors.  Sometimes, like most kids, she mixes up brown, black and gray.  I made sure to included those tricky colors in this simple little reader.  I knew this would be a hit with her, so I made sure to laminate the book and add a binder ring for a little more movement between the pages.

She loved the cute little turkeys and read the book about 100 times.  This would be a cute book to keep in your reading area for a while after the activity.

After we read the book a few times, I gave Violet a "Turkey Color" sheet and she searched the house for all of the different colored turkeys.  When she would find one, she would color it to match.   She is obsessed with coloring so I knew this would be a hit.  I placed all of the colors that she would need in a snack size baggie and attached them to the top of the clipboard.  When I use this in a classroom (if your lucky enough to have an assistant or parent helper) I would have half of the students do this activity and the other half work on a turkey crafting activity.

To review the colors we completed this cute little color book.  Prior to the activity, I underlined each color word with the matching color.  As we came to each page we named the color.

We continued talking about colors with these giant feathers I found on Amazon.  They had fun putting them in playdough and pretending they were turkeys.

 Another one of my favorite turkey books is Five Silly Turkeys by Salina Yoon.  It is such a simple, yet cute rhyming/number book.  I based a whole days worth of activities around it.  After we read the story, we talked about how the turkeys went missing in the story.  I asked her if she could help find them around the house.  I gave her a magnifying class and asked her to search the house like she was a little turkey looking for her friends-and boy did she get into it!  

We are lucky enough to have a farm nearby Nana and Papa's that allow little "corn inspectors" to pick up the corn left behind in the harvest.  After we searched the house for turkeys we discussed how turkeys loved to eat corn.  So we took our little beanie baby turkey and searched the field for corn.   

 One of my favorite fine motor activities is to have children dehusk the corn.  This little girl got her fingers working and helped push each corn kernal into a little sensory container.  Then I added little fall felt stickers to the corn.  Violet used her "turkey claw" (with a few more toes) to search the corn for the items.  Then she placed them on a laminated mat.  We practiced one to one correspondence with the item and identifying the numbers 1-5.  

 When it started to rain, we played this cute little gross motor activity that even the seven year-old wanted to participate in.  I placed three hoola hoops (from the dollar tree) in a line with the "turkey number printables" inside them, with the number 3 the furthest away.  I wrapped beanbags with rainbow scarves and we talked about the colors as we threw them.  Unfortunately for the poor little turkey, he was the most fun to throw:)

Next we read my favorite Thanksgiving/turkey book, Run Turkey Run by Diane Mayr.  We had fun helping the turkeys race to the woods.  We used a straw to blow the feathers across the table to the safety of the trees (blocks).  

The boys and girls loved our tag game we named after the story.  One of the kids pretended to be the farmer and wore an orange hat.  The others were the turkeys (felt crown).  The farmer had to catch all the turkeys and bring them back to the farm. 

After reading the story, we build trees with our ABC blocks and then Violet helped rescue the turkeys by blowing them to the trees to "hide."  She used a straw to blow all of the feathers to the blocks.

We read the story, T is for Turkey by Tanya Lee Stone.  Then, we listed all of the things that start with a /t/ sound on a giant piece of paper.  

We had fun finger painting a giant letter T.  If you were to use this in a classroom, it would be fun to write the first letter of each child's name and have them finger paint or glue feathers on it and share with their peers.  

A few extras...

 To continue working on colors I placed all of the colors from our story on a paper plate and my little friend helped me name each one as it was poured.  Of course we mixed them all to make a cool greenish color and Miss V dipped a cookie cutter in the paint to make a cute turkey painting.

On one of our outings outside we found these cute little pine cones and the kids wanted to make something with them.  So we used leftover foam leaves from our fall activities and a red and orange pipe cleaners (as well as paper eyes) to create this cute little turkey.  

Of course we had to make something sweet, so we made these cute cupcake turkeys.  You can find these little kits on Amazon or Michael's.  The beak is built into the cupcake liner but a piece of candy corn and twistable licorice (for the waddle) would be cute as well.

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