Create-a-Turkey Tray

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This art project works well as a solo activity to keep preschoolers or elementary school kids busy while you prep a Thanksgiving day feast. And with a toddler, it becomes a fun craft to do side-by-side!

To set up the tray, I cut large circles from brown construction paper for turkey bodies and smaller brown circles for heads. I then added “feathers” cut from construction paper in multiple hues, and orange triangles for beaks. Finally, add piles of wiggle eyes, glue sticks, and additional sheets of paper to be the background.

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From here, big kids can assemble their own turkey!

I showed Veronika first how to choose a large brown circle (“What shape is it?” I asked her), and to rub the glue stick on the back so we could press it to one of our large squares of paper.

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Next we added a small circle for the head. As she glued this one down, I pointed out the size difference between the small and large!

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We then named the colors as we glued down each feather. She also proudly pointed out that the orange beak was a triangle shape!

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She loved the wiggle eyes on the tray, so I gave her a small cup that she could dump out and refill a few times. Don’t forget to glue two onto the turkey!

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You can let your toddler make a more free-form “turkey”, too, which is a great part of the art process. I love crafts like this where we end up with one that looks like its “supposed” to and another that is authentically Veronika’s.

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Go For a Ride Day

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In the category of holidays you never knew exited, it turns out that November 22 is Go For a Ride Day, with the idea simply to get people away from screens and out and about.

If you’re at all like our family, coronavirus means your year has simultaneously meant more screens (hello, Zoom!), and more time out and about. Getting out of the house has saved our sanity, whether walking local trails, riding bikes, or going for a long drive.

So in the spirit of the day, we just made sure to get outside! Our ride of choice was a bike (for Travis) and a scooter (for little sister Veronika).

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We didn’t go far, but we got our fresh air and our exercise.

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Where would you head to on Go for a Ride Day? Please share in the comments!

Thanksgiving Turkey

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If a painted handprint turkey is too messy or squirmy an ordeal with your toddler, consider a traced outline of a hand instead this Thanksgiving! This turkey was particularly fun for Veronika to decorate because it doubles as sensory play.

First, I placed her hand flat against a paper plate and traced with pencil. Don’t worry if your outline is wobbly or missing in places; you can always fill in the gaps with an approximation.

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After the outline was traced, we colored in the turkey with brown crayon, and then decorated with materials from our craft bin. Veronika loved gluing down dried beans…

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…plus pouring extra beans from cup to cup for a while!

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Meanwhile, I added a few brightly colored beads on each “feather” and drew a beak and wattle as the finishing touch.

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For fun, I traced my own hand for us to decorate as well. Now we had a mommy turkey and a baby turkey!

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Rainbow Turkey

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I love capturing handprints at holidays, and I was so thrilled that Veronika held perfectly still for this one! It’s yet another cute craft to celebrate turkeys for the Thanksgiving holiday.

To make a turkey with a multi-colored feathers, paint your child’s thumb and palm with brown washable paint. I then painted two fingers yellow, one red, and one green.

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Press firmly onto construction paper, as flat as possible, and you’ll have a little turkey! You’ll need to work quickly for this step (hence no pictures) and I recommend having wipes ready to clean off your toddler’s hand right away.

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Once the paint dried, it was simply a matter of adding a beak, eye, legs, and wattle from marker. Don’t forget to add the date on the back of this one; it’s a keeper!

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Thanksgiving Place Mat

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It’s never too soon to teach even the youngest kids about thanks and gratitude. Although these concepts are a stretch for a two-year-old to comprehend, certainly Veronika knows what she likes! And that’s the foundation for giving thanks down the line.

We flipped through a magazine together, and whenever we came to an image of something she loves, we cut it out.

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Don’t limit yourself! Even something as simple as bicycles thrill my little toddler these days, so those were clipped out and added to our pile.

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Likewise for images of dogs and beaches and pizza.

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Soon we had a neat little assortment, and she used a glue stick to help me attach the pictures to a background of brown construction paper.

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Cover with clear contact paper to protect against spills and you’ll have the perfect toddler place mat for Thanksgiving day!

Potato Smash Up

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Potato Smash Up

A few simple tweaks give this recipe a leg-up over the regular mashed potato competition.

Ingredients:

  • 2 sweet potatoes
  • 2 russet potatoes
  • 2 cups frozen butternut squash
  • 1/4 cup Earth Balance butter
  • 1 cup plain non-dairy milk
  1. Peel and cube the sweet potatoes and russets. Place in a pot filled with water and bring to a boil. Add the butternut squash, then continue to cook for 20 minutes, until very tender.
  2. Drain and return the vegetables to the pan. Add the butter and mash with a potato masher to desired consistency. Stir in the milk and heat through before serving.

Feather Printing

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Not to be confused with feather painting, the idea with this craft wasn’t to paint with a feather but to make images of feathers on paper. The resulting craft makes a great piece of Thanksgiving artwork!

I cut small sponges into shapes roughly resembling feathers (although I confess some looked more like leaves). Our sponges had handles, which makes it easy for Veronika to grasp them, but regular kitchen sponges would work, too.

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Next I set out plates of paint in harvest colors, and showed Veronika how to dip in the paint and then press onto paper.

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She loved the little images that appeared. She was so proud when she could make the sponge as flat as possible for a clear print.

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As a variation, we then painted directly on a few craft feathers.

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These made fun prints when pressed down onto the paper, too!

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“Look what I made!” she proudly said when we were done, and narrated back all the paint colors.

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I love seeing her take pride in her artwork.

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Ten Favorite Transportation Books

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Who says only boys like books about trucks and cars and things that go? We’ve been reading so many books about vehicles lately that I thought would share some of Veronika’s favorites, which hopefully can help fill your home library, too!

One: Baby’s Very First Truck Book, Usborne Books

This one is almost guaranteed to please because it’s not just a book about a truck… It drives!

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We also love that the delivery truck drops off small vehicles (think scooters and bikes) at each stop it makes.

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Two: Little Coloring: Things That Go, Usborne Books

Story time can still be hard for Veronika to sit through, which is why we love this coloring book with text. Each page has a short sentence about a vehicle that I can read as Veronika scribbles!

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Three: Little Blue Truck, Alice Schertle

What’s not to love about this original book from what has gone on to became an equally lovable series? Animal noises, friends helping friends, fun rhyming words…. And every toddler wants to chime in on that little Beep Beep Beep!

Four: Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

I honestly find this book overwhelming, but my kids love it so much we count it as a favorite. You can read pieces of it here and there, or settle in for a marathon session on days that deserve an extra-long story.

Five: The Little Engine That Could, Watty Piper

This classic features a fun variety of engines for any train lover, but at the heart it’s a story about perseverance and kindness. I still choke up reading the ending every time!

Six: The Big Book of Big Trucks, Usborne Books

If your kids love big trucks (and I mean big!) they’ll love the super-sized fold-out pages in this book about some of the biggest vehicles ever made on the planet.

Seven: Colorful World: Vehicles, Nastja Holtfreter

This book takes Veronika’s favorite theme of vehicles but poses questions that become increasingly tricky as the story goes on. She can readily identify which scooter is different, or which one is a tow truck,. But what about pinpointing a truck driving in a different direction? Or new vocabulary like which one is a convertible. High marks for the writing in this book!

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Eight: Shine-a-Light at the Garage, Carron Brown and Charlie Davis

The Shine-a-Light series always makes books intriguing since kids shine a flashlight to uncover a mystery on each page. In this particular volume, kids learn all the goings-on inside a mechanic’s garage. We love the technical details!

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Nine: Night, Night Busy Town, Usborne Books

You get multiple books for the price of one here. Each sleepy vehicle on the chunky board book pages has a favorite bedtime story to read.

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These mini books pull out with a tab and are just the right size for toddler hands. Each one then features a different learning theme (numbers, shapes, opposites, etc.).

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Ten: Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, Sherri Duskey Rinker

The rhymes are fantastic in this one and the construction trucks curl up to sleep with teddy bears. Enough said.

Okay, one last notable mention: We love Little Tug by Stephen Savage for a sweet bedtime read about a sometimes-neglected category of vehicles: boats!

What vehicle books are a must-have in your family? Please share in the comments!

Shaving Cream Car Wash

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Veronika loves a song about going to the car wash, so I knew she would enjoy making the concept come to life with her favorite toy cars!

Shaving cream does double-duty in this game. It can either be the snow and muck getting cars dirty, or the soapy suds washing them off, depending how your toddler wants to play!

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I squirted a generous amount of shaving cream onto a tray, and showed her how to drive her cars through.

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The shaving cream is so fun to scoop up with any construction vehicles your child has. It’s also great for making tracks.

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But Veronika preferred the second step of our “car wash”, which was transferring the cars over to a bucket of warm clean water. Now, the shaving cream dissolved into suds and the water was soon thick and soapy.

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“The car’s in the muck!” she said with delight. She loved swimming the cars through this bin for quite a long time.

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Finally, we really did need to get them clean! So I added a second tray of warm water to get off the last of the suds.

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Every car was soon toweled dry and sparkly clean.

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Smart Art

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For toddlers who know their shapes, this art activity is a fun next-step up, getting them to think about how shapes link together to form familiar objects.

To start, I cut out various shapes from multiple colors of construction paper, including hearts and diamonds, as well as familiar favorites like rectangles and triangles.

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Now, guide your toddler through turning these various shapes into things they see in the world. If I put down a square, could she put a triangle on top to make it the roof of a house?

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She could! I talked her through what other shapes we might see around a house, like a smaller square for the door, or a circular sun in the sky. The concept was easiest for her if I squirted glue down in a corresponding shape first. So if she saw a circle of glue, she could glue down a circle of paper.

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Now she had a moon in her city sky! The same was true as I coached her through triangular mountains or tall rectangles for city buildings.

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Of course you can also just let your toddler have fun and glue the shapes wherever he or she wants to! Veronika did a bit of this, too, adding her own creative stamp to the project.

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We ended up with a fun variety of scenes, including one that looked like a city at night and another that resembled a mountain landscape.

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