I love Thanksgiving for a multitude of reasons. The delicious food, family being together, football is on and all the fall colors. I don’t know about your kids but mine always want to help or say they are bored at some point. It’s always a fun idea to have some easy and simple crafts on hand for the kiddos to do. We also do a few crafts ahead of time and then let the kids help decorate the tables with their masterpieces. The key here is easy. There are so many easy ones for you to do. Pinterest is definitely a wealth of resources for any sort of craft. I’m sharing some favs that we have actually done and had fun doing!
Foot Turkeys
First up is the hand and foot turkey. This is one we have done twice with each kid and both ahead of thanksgiving to use as decoration all November long. We did it once at their first thanksgiving and once when they are 4-5 years old. It was fun to see the difference in how they’ve grown and we use them all over the house for décor.
Supplies
- Canvas – make sure it’s big enough for your child’s foot
- Washable paint – Brown, Red, Orange and yellow
- Googly eyes
- Paint Brush
Directions
Paint one of your kids hands red and place it twice on the canvas. Do the same with yellow and orange, overlapping to make something to somewhat resemble the feathers of a turkey.
Paint the bottom of one of your kiddos feet brown. Help them carefully press their foot in the middle of the feathers. This will be the body of the turkey.
Let dry for 15-20 minutes.
Using the orange paint, paint a upside down triangle for the nose and press some googly eyes above the nose to finish off your turkey.
Write your kids name and year in the corner and you’re done!
Handprint Turkeys
If you like painted crafts, this handprint turkey is another fun one. The kids love making these and will make a few on multiple pieces of paper and then they decorate the turkeys and the background differently on each one. Some turkeys end up with sunglasses and mustaches.
Toilet Paper Roll Turkeys
These toilet paper roll turkeys are super fun and cute. It’s also a nice decoration for your tables on turkey day. Kids and adults can make them that day or your kiddos can make ahead of time and leave the leaves blank for whomever is sitting at the table. Every person can have a turkey at their place setting and can then write in what they are thankful for, and all can share.
Turkey Place Settings
This last one is pretty simple. This link is the actual one I used, and the creator has a free template for you to print out to use. These would also be great as place settings with your guests name on them or sweet gifts for kiddos to give to family members. We did not use cardstock as instructed but just regular construction paper which still worked great for us. I love how cute these are!
Paper Plate Pie Craft
I don’t know about you, but pie is a must on Thanksgiving. Pumpkin, apple, chocolate, cherry, or pecan. Whatever is your favorite, pie is necessary. So why not make a fun paper plate pie craft? This one is fun, and the instructions show you cherry but really imagination can come in to play here and the kiddos can “bake” up whatever pie they want by switching up the colors used. These are easy to do and the littles love it. My kids loved tearing the tissue paper and of course using glue.
Fall Trees
This is a great one for older kids. These paper trees were a hit in our house! This one requires a little more finesse. If you have younger kids that want to make a tree as well, there are some great options on Pinterest. This was one my daughter loved making. She loves being crafty and it was right up her alley. Once again, we did not use cardstock but used construction paper instead. I even had fun making this so it’s a great craft for teens and adults too. They make pretty decoration all fall long.
I hope you found some fun and easy crafts to do for Thanksgiving. The amount of crafts on the internet these days is so overwhelming so I hope my experience in finding some that are simple helps you narrow the search down. If you create some of these, share on our Instagram or Facebook! It’ll be fun to see what everyone does!
