Thanksgiving

We wanted to do some fun activities with our children to get them excited for the holiday and to help teach them about gratitude. It was a pretty broad topic but we had lots of fun and can't wait for Thanksgiving day! Here are a few activities we enjoyed with our kids and lots of yummy snack ideas.

Activities
Trace your hands on different colored card stock, trace your feet with shoes on to make the turkey's body. Cut out the hands and feet and glue together like the picture to make a turkey. Add eyes, a mouth, and feet!

Here is a turkey with just our hand:

Go on a nature walk and collect some leafs! Peel the wrappings off of your crayons and use the crayon to rub across the leafs that are under a plain white piece of paper. Ta-da you now have beautiful fall decorations!

Here is a picture of everything we used:

And here is our finished project:

Get creative with pipe cleaners! We made this cute turkey just following the picture that came on our package of pipe cleaners. (If you decide to do these a little hint is to start with the wings and work your way forward.)

Snacks
This is a super easy and fun treat to make and enjoy together. All you need is 2 bags of popcorn, 1 cup of Karo Syrup, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 (3 oz) package of your favorite jello mix, we used raspberry! Bring the syrup, sugar, and jello to a boil for about 3 minutes stirring continuously and pour mixture over popcorn, shape into balls and enjoy! Also if you want a more fluffy mixture just mix in a little baking soda to the sugar when through boiling. ; )

We made the next 2 snacks in the same day because they use a lot of ingredients. The picture below is of all the ingredients you will need to make turkeys and pilgrim hats.

(Big Marshmallows or mini resses pieces work too, 1 package of Fudge stripe keebler cookies, some camels, 2 blocks of dark almond bark or preferred melting chocolate, some candy corn, a red fruit roll up and frosting)

We have been making these little turkeys for thanksgiving for lots of years! I remember making them with my mom and have carried on the tradition with my kids.

Here is a picture of the back:

Here are the Pilgrims hats:

We made these yummy pumpkins and they were so simple!

~We used 1 package of marshmallows, 3 tsp of butter and 6 cups of rice krispies.

~We just melted the butter and mallows in the microwave for about a min and a half, mixed in 3 drops of yellow food coloring and 1 drop of red, and then stirred in the rice krispies.

~We then formed balls and added a tootsie roll for the top and green frosting for the leaves!

The kids LOVED them!

My little guy loved helping make "Gratitude Carameled Apples" even with a broken arm he helped unwrap every caramel!

We just stuck Popsicle sticks into the tops of clean washed apples and dipped them into caramel. We talked about things we were grateful for and then wrote a few on the sticks.

Ideas from Other Blogs
Through starting this blog we quickly learned that there are so so many other blogs and websites out that have wonderful ideas too. Here are a couple we really liked:

The gratitude tree from Ashleyannphotography.


The gratitude turkey from Toddler Approved.

Hand traced turkey from Busy Bee Kids Crafts.

Hand printed framed turkey from Kaboose.

Pilgrim Hats from Lake Shore Learning

Free Printables to help decorate the Thanksgiving Kids table from Shindig Parties To Go.

These adorable finger puppets from The Idea Room.

These fun Indian and pilgrims and decorated sugar cookies that look like corn from Family Fun.

Gratitude Rolls from Beauty and Bedlam.

Turkey Pop from Tippy Toes and Tantrums.

Yummy donut hole acorns from Gacious Rain.

More cute turkeys from 7th House on the Left.

These cute teepees with a tutorial on how to make them from Stiesthoughts.blogspot.com.

More acorn treats from The Crafty Crow.