We wanted to create a Thanksgiving craft for toddlers that is not only adorable, but helps grow their understanding of gratitude. These Toddler Thankfulness Turkeys support your child’s development through conversation, hands on family crafting, and visual cues!

We have a soft spot in our hearts for the traditional paper turkeys where children write what they’re thankful for on each of the feathers. Do you remember making these when you were little?! This is a great craft for school-aged kiddos, but most toddlers aren’t reading! Therefore, they really have no connection to the craft or its purpose. Our Toddler Thankfulness Turkeys are perfect for little kiddos because they include pictures of the things they are thankful for and support continued conversation all season long!

Supplies:

• Our Toddler Thankfulness Turkey Printable (download at the bottom of this post)
• 1 sheet of watercolor paper
• brown and orange paint (we used both watercolor and acrylic, but you could opt to use just one or the other)
• scissors
• liquid glue
• 2 googly eyes
• 5-6 pictures of people, places, and/or things your toddler is thankful for

How to make a Toddler Thankfulness Turkey:

1. What is your toddler thankful for? Talk about it together. The level of comprehension will undoubtedly vary from child to child, so you may not get straightforward answers, but attempting the conversation is SO great for your toddler’s development, communication skills, and building their understanding of gratitude. Guiding questions may be helpful, such as: “Who do you love?” “What do you like doing?” “Who makes your heart happy?” “What is your favorite toy?” “Where do you like to play?” When they give you an answer (for example, their stuffed bear), you can say, “Yes, Bear makes your heart happy. You are thankful for bear.” This affirmation can help solidify the concept of thankfulness and develop new vocabulary. Parents, you know your own children best– definitely attempt the conversation first, as much of this project is about connecting, but you can also identify their favorite people, places and things based on your observations.
2. Gather pictures. Gather pictures. Once you have identified 5-6 things that your child is thankful for, take or find pictures of them. If you don’t have photos of a favorite toy, you can do a Google search for an image. Most importantly, you just want to have pictures that your child can easily identify. We copied and pasted all of our photos onto one 8.5×11 sized document and printed them out on card stock.
3. Lay the tail feather template over each picture and cut them out. Some cropping may occur, but do your best to include the most important details within the feather shape.
4. It’s time to paint! Brown for the turkey’s body and orange for the turkey’s beak and legs. Provide your child with a half sheet of watercolor paper. You can choose your preferred paint for this process– your child just needs to paint the paper brown or tan. We let Cole paint the paper brown using watercolors and a large brush. When that dried, we gave him a sponge loaded with light brown acrylic paint and let him stamp it all over the brown watercolor. He LOVED playing with both paints, and the finished painting has great texture and movement. For the legs and beak, we gave Cole a scrap of watercolor paper and let him use orange watercolor to paint it. Let all the paintings dry completely.
5. Lay the turkey body template over the brown paper to cut out the body, and the turkey beak and leg templates over the orange paper to cut out the beak and legs.
6. Assist your toddler glue the googly eyes and beak onto the turkey’s face. Use as much or as little guidance as you want. Picasso turkeys are cute too!
7. Parents, glue on the legs and feathers. I arranged the turkey feathers behind the body before I started gluing to ensure they all fit. To add further support I taped the back of the feathers to the body after gluing.
8. Don’t forget to write your toddler’s name and the date on the back— your future nostalgic self will appreciate it.
9. Display the Thankfulness Turkey someplace your child can see it regularly and refer to it when you discuss the concept of thankfulness. Look at the turkey together and continue to reiterate why your child is thankful for the people, places, and things pictured. It only took a day before Cole would look at his turkey, point to the photos, and excitedly say, “I thankful dump truck!” Baby steps towards building that understanding! Woo hoo!

^^^This printable download includes the turkey body, feather, and beak templates.^^^

Friends, we are thankful for you, and thankful that we can share this opportunity to create and connect with your little turkeys! If you share your finished turkeys on Instagram, we’d love to see them, so please tag us! @wayfarerfamily