Thanksgiving Activities For Preschoolers and Kindergartners

All of these Thanksgiving activities for preschoolers and kindergartners can be done in your classroom or at home. Kids will have fun, learn and be ready for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Early Literacy Activities

Letter recognition is FUN when there's a spinner! This Thanksgiving resource includes 3 differentiated letter and letter sound activities. Students can work on easily confused lowercase letters or on letter sounds. Use these in centers, small groups, or as morning work.
  • Letter recognition is FUN when there’s a spinner! This Thanksgiving resource in my store includes 3 differentiated letter and letter-sound activities, including the sensory bin cards shown above. Students can work on easily confused lowercase letters or on letter sounds. Use these Thanksgiving activities for preschoolers or kindergartners (depending on your group) in centers, small groups, or as morning work.
  • These cute Thanksgiving writing prompts provide extra support for new writers by including a word bank – these are just right for Kindergarten.
  • I love this lesson idea based on The Little Red Hen. There are several more great Thanksgiving activities listed there too.
  • This printable set is a fun turkey and pie alphabet matching game. It is great for a literacy center or as a small group or individual activity!
  • Emergent reader books are a great way to not only strengthen literacy skills but encourage children to enjoy reading and build their confidence! This turkey version will be extra exciting in November and helps with colors! Here is another really fun one!

More Thanksgiving Learning Activities

  • Sometimes asking children questions like these Thanksgiving Ice Breaker Questions can lead to finding out so much more about a child. It’s also an opportunity to develop their language skills.
  • Lots of kids love pattern blocks. Children will have fun with these building turkeys while strengthening fine motor skills and exploring shapes! You’ll definitely want to add this set of free printables to your list of Thanksgiving activities for preschoolers.

Thanksgiving Art & Craft Activities

These crafts and art activities will fit the bill whether you’re looking for a cute craft to send home or display in your hallway, or just for fun and fine motor skill development.

An adorable turkey puppet that kids can make and play with while reading any turkey book, but our favorite is 10 Fat Turkeys!
  • We created this turkey puppet to help us get ready for Thanksgiving. We played with it while reading the fun counting book 10 Fat Turkeys. Kindergarteners and preschoolers will love this playful combination!
An adorable Turkey Spin Art craft that is a perfect Thanksgiving decoration made by kids. Place on your Thanksgiving table for an added pop of festivity!  #thanksgivingforkids #booksandgiggles #kindergarten #preschool
  • My girls used their spinner art to create these adorable Turkey table place markers. These take a bit of assembly work but would be a lot of fun if you have another adult helping in your classroom.
  • These 3-D turkey crafts use coffee filters for the feathers would look cute on a bulletin board – or on the fridge at home. No two are the same, which leads to such fun and excitement to see the results!
A printable Thanksgiving place mat inspired by a fun children's book: The Bear Gives Thanks. This is a great color page activity for Thanksgiving morning or during the meal!
  • Next up is this printable Thanksgiving placemat inspired by the sweet children’s book Bear Says Thanks. This is a great coloring page activity to send home for Thanksgiving break.
  • Check out how cute this turkey is! With a little help from an adult or older children, kids will be so proud of what they can make. These feathers actually move!
  • Holidays are the perfect time to do a little crafting! This construction paper turkey is simple enough for young children to make on their own. Even if they don’t quite follow directions it will turn out so cute!
  • Have you ever used chalk pastels? They have such bold colors and is an art medium that many children may not have used before! They make for perfect turkey feathers too!
  • Pony beads are the perfect size for helping little ones strengthen their finger muscles when they pick up the beads. You can use them to make these story inspired friendship bracelets for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Fun & Games

  • How cute is this Thanksgiving Bingo? Bingo is not only fun for the whole class, but it also helps strengthen important skills. Bingo can help children with classification and sorting, visual discrimination, and listening.
  • Turkey Trouble is one of my favorite Thanksgiving-themed books and this snack goes along with it perfectly. It’s not what you would think of when you hear Thanksgiving, but it is just right for this story!
  • If you’ve never done a turkey disguise with your kids, now is the time. It is so much fun to see how children use their imagination to create the best disguise for the turkey!

It’s challenging to teach little kids an accurate version of our country’s upsetting history with Native Americans, so I generally opt to focus on turkeys, gratitude, and family feasts, with maybe a mention that the Native Americans were sad but they helped the Pilgrims, who were very thankful.

I’d love to hear how you handle this controversial topic in your classroom or with your own personal children. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy some of these fun controversy-free Thanksgiving activities with your kiddos.

2 Comments

  1. Wonderful ideas, I miss doing activities like this since I retired teaching. I now have a beautiful granddaughter, age 1 and want to do activities with her. She is quite observant and I would appreciate any ideas for 1-2 yr olds….

    Thank you

    1. I don’t really have much for toddlers here on the blog. You might like this idea from Busy Toddler. You could use a wider mouth jar and name the colors as she picks them up to bump up the learning element.

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