Thanksgiving is just around the corner and the best way to celebrate it is by making fun festive crafts! There are so many amazing Thanksgiving crafts that you can do at home, but what’s better than making Turkey Thanksgiving crafts! Making turkey crafts is the perfect theme for your child to celebrate and understand Thanksgiving. I picked out some of my favorite turkey crafts that I think you and your child will be thankful for. Gobble gobble!

1. Thanksgiving Turkey Dough Craft from Tools to Grow OT – This is the perfect tactile recipe that will allow you and your child to explore and create your very own turkey! Your child will be exposed to great sensory benefits such as tactile, proprioception, following verbal and written directions, tool usage, hand strengthening, and praxis.  

 

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2. Soda Bottle Turkey Fine Motor Activity from Stir the Wonder – What’s better than getting into the holiday spirit by making a big motor turkey! Here your child can decorate their turkey with large colorful feathers, googly eyes, and some brown paint. Instructions here

3. Turkey Juice Box Cover from Sugar Aunts - If you’re looking for a cup holder for your child for Thanksgiving dinner, here is the perfect craft you can make at home. Just grab some colored feathers, googly eyes, some crafting scarps, and a cardboard tube that can be made into a turkey cupholder.

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4. Clothespin Feathers Turkey from Stir the Wonder - Making this fun craft is a great way to work on your child’s fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and bilateral coordination. Your child can match the colored feathers to where they belong on the turkey.

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5. Turkey Fine Motor Activity and Craft from Fantastic Fun and Learning – Working on scissor skills and cutting the toilet paper roll is the perfect way to help strengthen your child’s fine motor skills. Also, placing the feathers into small holes of the turkey makes perfect practice for fine motor skills and visual skills.

6. Feed the Turkey from Mama OT – Sometimes the simplest crafts are the best! Work on bilateral coordination, pincer grasp, hand-eye coordination, and in-hand manipulation, and then decorate your turkey. Take it up a notch by adding in some tongs and placing the turkey on one side of your child and the noodle on the other side to promote crossing the midline.

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7. Play Dough Toothpick Turkey from Mama OT – Roll up some playdough or Theraputty to make a toothpick turkey. Work on building up pincer grasp, tripod grasp, strengthening fingers and webspace, separation of the two sides of the hand, bilateral coordination, and hand-eye coordination. This super simple turkey craft is easy and fun!

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8. Clothespin Toilet Paper Roll Turkey from Mama OT – This fun activity provides a great way for your child to work on their fine motor skills. The clothespins are the perfect item to help your child work on their pincer grasp, strengthening their fingers/hands/webspace, and bilateral coordination.

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9. Button the Feathers on the Turkey from Mama OT – This turkey craft uses buttons and other creating pre-buttoning activities to help your child develop their fine motor and self-dressing skills. Work on your child’s pincer grasp, bilateral coordination, hand-eye coordination, and button/self-help skills when doing this activity.

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10. Thankful Turkey Craft from Kids Activities Blog – Using this step-by-step tutorial by Kids Activities Blog is a great way for children to share what they are thankful for and to work on their visual skills!

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11. Turkey Felt Board Feather Matching from Teach Beside Me – Working on bilateral coordination, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor skills is best when making a craft for Thanksgiving. This activity is fun because it allows your child to work on color recognition and pattern.

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12. Feather Color Sorting and Fine Motor Activity from Fantastic Fun and Learning - To get started with this craft, gather some colorful playdough, feathers, googly eyes, and small foam triangles to work on color sorting and recognition. This is the perfect activity to help your child learn how to sort colors and work on their fine motor skills at the same time!

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13. Thanksgiving Handwriting Craft from Tools to Grow – Work on fine motor skills, bilateral integration, visual-motor coordination, praxis, and hand-writing skills by making this Thanksgiving Handwriting Craft. Such a great turkey craft to do with your child to show what they are thankful for!

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14. Watercolor Coffee Filter Turkey from Typically Simple – Cutting along the edges of the coffee filter, adding color with a marker, and drawing a turkey face on the front is a fun creative craft to do before Thanksgiving. Typically Simple shares a craft to work on scissor skills and fine motor skills.

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15. Leaf Turkey from Toddler Approved – Grabbing some leaves from outside is a fun fall and Thanksgiving craft. This is another great fine motor skills craft to work on with your child.

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If you have any suggestions on fun Thanksgiving activities that are more sensory-related please share with us!

Thank you for reading our 15 Fun Turkey Crafts for Thanksgiving article!

It's just around that time of year again! Halloween is a fun time to learn new and fun sensory activities that involve ghosts, pumpkins, and spooky sensory bins. These sensory activities promote a great way to help children strengthen fine motor skills, promote creativity, give exposure, encourage playtime, and help complete a goal.

All of these fun activities are a great way to celebrate Halloween this year. I love that these fun Halloween sensory activities can be done with one child or in a group activity.

Here are some fun Halloween sensory activities to complete a goal with your child.

Ghost Sensory Activities

A fun way to get into the spirit of Halloween and enhance fine motor skills are ghost activities! These activities are perfect to try at home, school, or at a clinic. One fun idea that you can use with your child is playing with shaving cream. Playing with shaving cream has many benefits when looking for a fun sensory activity.

Ghost Foam

Ghost foam is a fun way for kids to make and play with. Playing with shaving cream can improve handwriting skills, visual motor skills, and play skills. It is also a great activity to work with children who are tactile. Be careful though shaving cream can be quite messy, I suggest keeping a towel nearby to clean up the mess!

Here is a fun recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose to make a spooky ghost!

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Ice Ghost

This fun spooky ghost activity involves using the sink and bathroom! It is a great way to incorporate everyday activities into something exciting. Turning ghosts into ice can also be a fun way to involve sensory play while being at home. Following the steps in making the spooky ghosts, it can be an easy way to teach your child how to follow steps in their daily routines.

Learning how to follow these steps can help enhance creativity and teach your child how to use their imaginations. Waiting for the spooky ghost to cool down, you and your child can create an imaginative world using fingerpaint that can help improve fine motor skills! After playing with your spooky ice ghost and creating your enchanted imaginative world, your child can learn how to clean up their mess.

Here is another fun recipe from Finding the Golden Gleam to

Pumpkin Sensory Activities

Pumpkins are a big part of Halloween which can lead to many fun activities all season long. It is the perfect theme to use all fall from Halloween to Thanksgiving. You can work on carving pumpkins, playing with pumpkin seeds, using pumpkins as a themed sensory pin, or even finger painting a pumpkin.

All of these fun activities can be worked on at home, school, and occupational therapy sessions. If you try this at home, it will be a fun family activity that will create so many amazing memories and at the same time help strengthen your child’s sensory skills. These pumpkin sensory activities can be an outstanding way to work on strengthening therapeutic skills!

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A great way of strengthening therapeutic skills is carving a pumpkin! Carving pumpkins combine using your fine motor, gross motor, and sensory skills. After you carve your pumpkin, taking out the pumpkin seeds is a perfect example of sensory play.

You can even color the seeds of the pumpkin for creativity. Working on carving the pumpkin can help strengthen your child’s hand muscles and fine motor skills. Be careful with using sharp objects around children. This activity can be done in the comfort of your own home!

Here is a recipe to dye pumpkin seeds for sensory play!

Pumpkin Squish Bag

Making your own pumpkin squish bag is the best way to celebrate Halloween this year! It is the perfect activity to strengthen up your child’s hand muscles. After carving your pumpkin, you can use the pumpkin’s insides as the best way to create a mess-free squish bag! Putting the pumpkin’s insides in a zip lock bag can help create the spooky concoction.

Drawing a scary face on the squish bag is an exciting way to celebrate Halloween in this fun activity. The pumpkin squish bag is a wonderful fine motor skills activity.

Your child can learn how to manipulate the pumpkin seeds while they are in the bag. Pushing the pumpkin seeds around can also incorporate using both visual and fine motor skills. This is the perfect sensory activity to get your child involved in celebrating Halloween and perfecting their hand-eye coordination!

Here is a link to a great explanation of how to make your squish bag from Little Bins for Little Hands!

Spooky Sensory Bins

Sensory bins are a beneficial way for children to learn how to play and use their senses! Playing with the toys in the bin can help calm down your child, make your child focus, and initiate interactions.

Some of the sensory bins can be decorated to match the seasons. It is also easy to make sensory bins, they can be made with any type of tray, bin, or box making it super affordable. Putting the seasons with the sensory bins is a great way to create Halloween sensory bins.

This page has great resources to make Halloween themed sensory bins for an effective therapy session.

Witches Brew Sensory Bin

This spooky sensory bin is a great way to incorporate sensory play and Halloween! You can add any type of object or item that you want when it comes to making a spooky sensory bin.

Sensory bins are a great way for a child to explore sensory play and feel many different textures. In the Witches Brew Sensory Bin, adding several spooky-themed objects can be really exciting. Adding different tools to the sensory bin is also a great way to incorporate fine motor skills.

Placing several objects in the bin can help the child identify them and point them out. This is a perfect exercise to work on visual-motor skills. Playing in this sensory bin can be a perfect way to concocted spooky Halloween spells!

Here is the website where I find the perfect recipe to make this spooky sensory bin!

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Halloween Cloud Dough

Making Halloween Cloud Dough can be quite messy! Cloud dough is super soft and easy to mold which is perfect for children.

To incorporate the Halloween theme, the cloud dough can be colored into any color, but for Halloween, the perfect colors would be black, white, and orange. I found the perfect recipe on how to make Halloween Cloud Dough here at Simple for Kids - https://www.simplefunforkids.com/how-to-make-cloud-dough.html/.

If you want to read more on Halloween Cloud Dough, Simple for Kids has the perfect article for more information.

Playing with the cloud dough is the perfect opportunity for children to learn more about sensory play. There are so many benefits when playing with cloud dough:

If you want more information on the benefits of cloud dough, here is the website that I found for more information.

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