Thanksgiving Day Game and/or Craft!

This past Friday I was watching four kids ages 5, 4, 3, and 3 years. We had lots of fun playing! I made up an activity that could be fun any day around Thanksgiving but it would be perfect for the actual day when all the family is together. It's very simple and helps to keep the little ones entertained. There are two steps to this, a game and then a craft. You can decide to just do the game but if you wanted to take this a little further, I will show you how! 

Give each child a brown or white paper lunch sack to decorate. Get out stickers and markers and let them create! While they are doing this, go to another room or if it's nice, go outside. Get a bag of feathers from the craft store and hide them everywhere. You can make it harder for older kids and easier for younger kids!

After they are done decorating make up a story about a Turkey who lost all his feathers in the other room and how they get to go collect them! This is the fun part, let them run crazy trying to collect feathers! This is kind of like an easter egg hunt on Easter! =)

The next step I added because I wanted them to do a craft with their feathers they found. If you want to make things easy just give them paper, markers, and tape and let them create whatever they want! I wanted them to make turkeys with their feathers so here is what I did.

IMPORTANT: If you are planning to make the turkey, I got all of this stuff ready BEFORE we even did the feather hunt!

I made my favorite playdoh, which I used to make the the golf pen holder! If you have another easy self drying dough recipe, you can use that also but for this all you need is:

• 2 cups of corn starch
• 2 cups of baking soda
• 1 1/4 cups cold water

You mix all the ingredients together in a small pot over medium heat and stir for about 2-3 min until the mixture looks like mashed potatoes (photo on the right). 

I added brown paint to the mixture because I didn't want to deal with the kids painting on this project. This dough will be the turkeys body.

I took an orange pipe cleaner and cut it in 2 inch strips and twisted it in half. You will need two of these per turkey, they are the feet! I also got out two googly eyes per turkey and cut one small triangle, per turkey, for the beak out of thick paper.

 Separate out the playdough in equal parts on a paper plate for each child. Tell them to make one big ball, which will be the body, and one small ball, which will be the head. Place the head in the front of the turkey and then let them put their feathers behind the head however they want to. Then have them place the eyes and beak on their face and stick the orange pipe cleaners below for the feet. There you have it! A cute Thanksgiving Turkey!