Post by Sara Stringer.
The holidays are coming and it is a great time for the family to spend quality time decorating and preparing. You can bake, decorate and do crafts with your kids to get them into the spirit of the holiday… Here are some interesting and fun Thanksgiving crafts ideas for kids.
Thanksgiving Wreath
Making a Thanksgiving wreath is very simple, fun, and inexpensive. The materials you need are probably already in your house.
You’ll need:
· a paper plate
· some crayons or markers
· glue or a glue stick
· scissors
· some construction paper
Instructions:
1. The first step is to cut some leaves out of the construction paper. If you’re really handy or want a more “natural” look, you can use real leaves, as long as they aren’t too dry (a variation of this could also be paper cutouts of the child’s hand).
2. Step two is to glue the leaves around the ribbed edge of the paper plate, leaving the center area for three lines where the child can write his/her name, the words “is thankful for” and what they are thankful for.
3. The rest is up to your imagination; glitter or other decorations can be added to the leaves, or the child can write something he/she is thankful for on each of the paper leaves (not recommended for real leaves).
Paper Turkey
One of many fun turkey craft projects is to have the child make paper cutouts of their family’s hands and decorate/color them as turkeys.
Stationary
If your child is handy with your home computer (or you don’t mind watching over their shoulder while they do so), you can fire up the Paint or a similar program and let your child make and print their own custom Thanksgiving Letterhead Stationary.
Coloring
Again, if you have a printer handy, there are a number of very good downloadable printable books that are free; they can be colored by your child. Websites for these are numerous, but a good start is this site.
Tabletop Turkey
If you would rather keep your child away from the computer for a while, there are still more crafts that can be made at home with simple materials; one that’s a lot of fun is for your child to make his or her own Tabletop Turkey, although it requires a few more materials that are easily found (at still pretty cheap) at your local dollar or craft store.
The material needed are:
· paper cups
· scissors
· orange, red and yellow construction paper
· crayons or markers
· glue or glue sticks
· colored pom poms
· “googly eyes” found in craft shops
Instructions
1. Turn the cup upside down and color it (turkeys are usually brown)- this will become the “body” of the turkey
2. Cut some feathers out of the construction paper and glue them on the back of the body- these will become the “tail”
3. Cut a small triangle out of some orange or yellow construction paper and fold it in half- this will be the turkey’s beak
4. Cut a heart out of some red construction paper and fold it in half – this will become the turkey’s wattle
5. Glue a pom pom to the top of the cup and add the googly eyes, then glue the beak and the wattle below the googly eyes.
These are some fun and easy Thanksgiving crafts to get you and your children started!
