Thankful Turkey :: Easy And Fun Thanksgiving Tradition For Kids
A few years ago I stumbled across an Instagram page called Busy Toddler. If you’ve never seen Busy Toddler and all her fun ideas and activities you need to! While not everything that she posts about has worked for our family, there is one activity that has become a tradition: the Thankful Turkey.
The Thankful Turkey is pretty simple and low maintenance, but also a lot of fun and a great addition to your Thanksgiving traditions.
To start, you need to create a turkey body.
I usually use a brown paper bag and cut it in an oval shape with some curves in the middle. Once you’ve created your turkey’s body, you’ll need to add his face. This includes a yellow triangle for his beak, white and black circles for his eyes, and a red squiggly shape for his wattle. When all of that is created, you glue it together and you have a turkey! Well more like a potato with a turkey face, but once it all comes together it looks like a turkey I promise!
Once your turkey is created, use colorful construction paper and cut 30 turkey feathers.
Set these aside, you’ll need them later.
Next, find a space in your home to stick your turkey (we stick ours on the wall by our kitchen table). Introduce your turkey to your kids and have them name him. You can make 1 turkey for your family or an individual turkey for each child, just make sure each child has 30 turkey feathers.
Now, each day of November ask your child(ren) what they are thankful for. We do this at dinner time, and then have 
them write it on a feather and attach it to the turkey. By the end of the month your turkeys will be full!
This is a great opportunity to teach your kids thankfulness and how to be grateful.
And you’ll be surprised about what gets included on your turkey. One year every single character from Mickey Mouse made it on the turkey before either myself or my husband did. Last year, the guy my sister was seeing, who my son had never met, made the turkey before any of his aunts or uncles. So it can get silly at times, but it is a great strategy for helping kids to learn how to express gratitude in a simple and child-like way.
