With Thanksgiving just days away, I took some time recently to do some seasonal crafts with my kiddos. The point of these activities was not to walk away with Pinterest-worthy creations to show-off. Instead, the hope was to take some time out from all the busy that’s always around us and reflect on the stellar years we’ve had so far—all while enjoying some much-needed quality time together.
We talked about lessons learned, memories made, and things we’re grateful for and found ways to illustrate it all through the things we created.
To recreate a similar experience with your own crew, here’s a list of ideas for Thanksgiving crafts to do, and the best part is the materials needed for each of these activities are minimal and may already be in or around your home!
Pinecone Flowers
The only two things you need for this activity are pinecones and handheld pruning shears.
The idea is to take a pinecone and cut it in half. The bottom half still attached to the pinecone’s core leaves you with what looks like a beautiful wooden flower. You can shape the final product further by sanding or filing down rough pieces and edges and you can even add paint into the mix if you’d like; however, we left ours natural. These can be great standalone pieces used as ornaments or other small décor, or they can be added to larger collections to create a whole bouquet. The final product will vary depending on the variety of pinecone you use.
Leaf Birds
To start this activity, begin a collection of random leaves you find on walks, at work, at school, around your home—basically anywhere you see a fallen leaf that catches you eye, snag it and stash it until you’re ready to assemble this fun, easy craft.
Then, when you’re ready grab a sheet of paper or canvas and draw a scene to place your bird in. We just did a tree branch for ours. We placed the leaves on top of each other in a way that shaped a bird’s head and body and then drew on legs and an eye and voila! A perfect creation to celebrate the changing colors and wildlife of the season.
Salt Dough Ornaments
To do this activity, I followed this recipe and it worked perfectly for us. We did a variety of shapes, with some being just round and then for the rest I used some festive cookie cutters in the shapes of leaves, pumpkins, acorns and apples. Once they were done baking they were a blank canvas for adding paint, marker, whatever our hearts desired.
Instead of just standalone ornaments, you can also string these all together into a garland of sorts. To tie it back to the reflective nature of the season, your children can use each one to write something they love or are thankful for.
Thankful Turkeys
Draw a turkey any way you’d like—I hand drew mine (forgive me—I’m NO artist) but my kiddos opted to do two different variations of the handprint turkey we’re all familiar with from school. We then went back and each wrote in things we’re thankful for from the last year. To do this you honestly could just get by with a piece of paper and a pencil, but we added in markers, paints*, colored pencils and opted to use canvas instead of paper.
Trees of Growth
For this craft, we used canvas and markers to draw out barren trees and then went back and added leaves highlighting things we learned or ways we grew throughout the past year.
We approached this a few different ways—my son opted to do fingerprints and write in his items, while my daughter wrote each item then drew a leaf around it. There’s no right or wrong approach! I wanted them to express themselves in the way they wanted, so I trusted their instincts and let their creativity flow.
Gathering Tree
Similar to the craft above we drew a larger tree on a larger piece of canvas ahead of Halloween night. Then, we, along with everyone who celebrated with us that evening added a finger or thumbprint to the tree. This could be a fun element to have at your Thanksgiving gatherings this year.
The kiddos loved explaining this activity to everyone who participated, and it’s such a fun memory to have.
Terracotta Turkeys
I love to garden, so I always have extra, various-sized terracotta pots lying around, so for this creation we snagged a couple of those and tapped into our leaves (and feathers—my son decided to mix it up a bit) we previously collected for our leaf bird pieces. There’s a few ways you can approach this one. We opted to leave our pots upright, just in case we decide to actually use them to pot something in the future. Then, to bring our turkeys to life, on one we simply drew a face on one side then glued a collection of feathers and leaves on the opposite side. On another we actually used a fingerprint to make a turkey body shape, then glued smaller leaves around it to mimic its feathers. We used an all-purpose crafting glue to attach items to the pot and then also added a layer of modpodge over items to further reinforce them.
Painting
Anytime we pull out any of our craft stuff, we inevitably end up painting just for the fun of it with no goal in mind. We again opted for canvas instead of paper for these more unstructured pieces, but you could use whatever medium you’d like! We’ve been known to paint the rogue cardboard box when the opportunity strikes—anything to help express what we’re feeling in the moment.
Whatever activity(ies) you decide to try, go in with low expectations for artistic brilliance and high expectations for time well spent together and you’ll surely walk away happier than when you started.
*please note, we used acrylic paint for each activity
