Turkey Feather Fun

Enjoy some fun, easy-to-implement activities this Thanksgiving and be thankful! Children develop fine motor skills, build vocabulary, express gratitude, and internalize print concepts as they cut, color, glue, and talk turkey!

Grade, Age Range or Specialized Learner: Multi-age, Preschool/Pre-K, 3-5 year old

Target Learning Skill(s):

Vocabulary development
Fine Motor Skills
Print Concepts

Common Core Standards:

Language: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use
L.K.6 Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.

Foundational Skills: Print Concepts
RF.K.1b Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

Speaking and Listening: Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas
SL.K.5 Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.

The Thankful Turkey printable from the KidsSoup library provides children with fine motor skill practice while helping them to develop vocabulary. To begin this activity, we wrote “thankful” on our dry erase board at our morning meeting. We talked about how the word has two parts “thank” and “ful," and gave children plenty of time to express their ideas about each part of the word in order to guide them in forming a definition. Our class definition was “Being thankful means that you are happy to have something you love.”

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

In small groups, we gave each child the turkey shape to color while we worked individually with children on the feathers. We asked each child to recall the new word we learned at morning meeting, and helped them restate what "thankful" means. Once children showed that they were beginning to understand the word, we had them name things they were thankful for and recorded answers on the feathers. We chose to let each child decide how many feathers they needed. One child chose to have only one feather while others filled two pages worth of feathers. If you have older children, they can record their own answers.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

The children colored their feathers, cut them out, and glued them to their decorated turkeys.

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Preschool Activities:

Media Root

Submitted by KidsSoup member Beth Steward

Hello Mr. Turkey

Original Author Unknown

Hello Mr. Turkey, how are you, how are you? (clap two times)
Hello Mr. Turkey, how are you, how are you? (clap two times)
With a gobble, gobble, gobble and a wobble, wobble, wobble (clap two times)
Hello Mr. Turkey, how are you how are you?

Here's a great inquiry-based Painting with Feathers activity from the Teach Preschool Website.