When it comes to getting a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, you probably just stop by your local grocery store or farm. For the people living in one little town, getting a turkey is much more difficult!

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A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman tells the story of Pete the turkey and the townspeople of Squawk Valley. The people in the town need to get a turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner, so they decide to trick one into coming to town. They host a turkey themed arts and crafts festival to capture a vain turkey. Pete doesn’t want to be dinner though, and he may just outsmart the people of Squawk Valley! This story is an entertaining read aloud written in verse, and accompanied by colorful and fun illustrations. Kids will love reading about Pete again and again!

Sticky Turkey – The blog Teach Preschool used sticky paper and feathers to create a fun patterning activity. First, she placed a large piece of sticky paper on the wall and placed a large turkey shape in the middle. She gave kids a bag of feathers and had them create patterns on the rug. They were then encouraged to place the feathers on the sticky wall to dress the turkey. This is a great way to work on patterning with kids, while giving them an opportunity to have a fun sensory experience with the sticky paper and the feathers!

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Turkey Arts and Crafts – In the story, the townspeople try to trick the turkey by creating an arts and crafts show with a turkey theme. Let your kids create their own turkey art! Set up a craft area with any art supplies you have (paper, pasta, leaves, acorns, crayons, glue, pom poms, feathers, etc) and let them get creative!

Our Button Turkey

Turkey Buttons – The blog Natural Beach Living created an awesome turkey activity to practice using buttons! This can be a difficult skill for kids to learn, and this activity makes it fun to practice. Create a turkey shape out of brown felt and attach buttons along the rounded edge. Cut feather shapes out of different colors of felt and cut slits to fit the buttons through. You could also make this into a color matching game by making the buttons and the feathers the same colors and having kids match them.

Related Post: Turkey Fun for Thanksgiving

Work on fine motor skills and create a plump and perky turkey!

Our plump and perky turkey!

Turkey Feather Fun– This is a great activity for practicing fine motor skills. I placed a turkey on the front of our colander and gave my daughter feathers to place into the holes. She enjoyed the sensory experience of playing with the feathers and liked adding to the turkey until he was covered. I will definitely keep this out in her art area for her to play with throughout the Thanksgiving season.

Feed the turkey with math and language skills!

Feed the Turkey – Draw a turkey on a brown paper bag and cut a hole for the mouth. You can use this turkey for a wide variety of skills with a little bit of prep. Cut out circles from different colors of paper and write words, letters or numbers to correspond with your child’s skill. You can call out letters or sight words and have kids read them as they find them and feed them to the turkey. You could also write numbers on them and call out simple math problems, or mark the circles with different numbers of dots and call out numbers to kids. Make the game even more challenging by hiding the circles around the room!

What kind of turkey activities do you plan to do with your kids?

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