Thrifty Kids Thursday: Thanksgiving Crafts For Kids – Place Mats, Turkey Napkin Rings and More

We promised you some holiday Thrifty Kids Thursdays through the end of the year! So, with Thanksgiving now being one week away (so sorry if your heart dropped from that news – mine did as well), it is only appropriate to get those kiddos involved in the celebration. So time for some Thanksgiving crafts for kids!

We are going to show you three different ideas that we have done and then share some links to even more ideas.

Our kids love to be an intimate part of the celebrations, even down to the decor and table settings! It also makes for an enjoyable and memorable holiday. Even when we go to “grandma’s house” we can still offer to decorate the table.

Homemade place mats

First, super easy table place mats for your Thanksgiving tables! This is actually an activity that even the youngest in the family can easily do.

What you will need:

• Fall colored construction paper
• Contact paper
• Markers, Stamps, crayons

How to make:

• Place the paper and craft supplies in front of your kiddos and let them go to town.  You can write what they are thankful for, hand prints, memories, or scribbles (depending on the age).
• Once they have completed their place mats, just cover both sides in the contact paper.

That’s it! This is a fun, easy and even last minute craft – but the memories can last for years and it is so fun to see what it was that they were thankful for in year 2010 and beyond.  The hand prints are also so fun as you pull them out each year and compare. They also become quite a conversation starter at the Thanksgiving table.

Turkey Napkin Rings

These are Thrifty Al’s favorite – check out these fun Turkey Napkin Rings!

What you will need:

• Red, yellow, brown and organe foam sheets
• Construction paper
• Squiggly Eyes
• Staples
• Scissors to cut a beveled edge (optional)

How To Make:

• Draw a half oval onto computer paper and cut out with regular scissors (not beveled). Then place this half oval onto your red foam sheet and draw as many as you can with this pattern.  Then using your beveled scissors, cut these ovals out.
• Repeat this process for the orange foam sheets, except make these ovals smaller by 1/2 – 3/4 inch form the red.
• Then using a circle pattern (like the lid from your milk), make circle patterns on your yellow foam sheet and cut circles with a straight edge pair of scissors.  The yellow circle need to be about 1/2″ smaller around than your orange half-oval.
• Then using your thumb as a pattern, trace and cut out your turkey head from the brown foam.
• Lay a piece of the red half-oval down. Stack the orange half-oval on top of the red, then the yellow circle on top of the orange and finally the brown thumb turkey head at the top edge of the yellow circle.
• With your stapler, staple all 4 layers together.
• Then with your beveled scissors, cut out a straight line for the turkey gobbler with the red foam. Glue this on the thumb print head.

• With the yellow foam, cut out a triangle beak and glue it on your turkey head.
• Then glue the two squiggly eyes on the head.
• With the construction paper, cut out strips and staple the ends together to make a loop.
• Then staple this at the bottom of your turkey on the back side.

• That’s it!

Thanksgiving decorations

Finally – fun Thanksgiving decor! For even more simplicity, we purchased pre-cut foam turkeys on clearance last year, along with some fall colored feathers (just a hint…. we purchase most of our craft project supplies after the holiday to enjoy the next year for even cheaper).

Then we just let the kids go to town gluing feathers on these pre-cut foam turkeys! This ended up being their favorite as it involved soft feathers and glue – what kid wouldn’t be happy!  These turkeys grace the top of our festive fall fireplace mantel!

For this project, you could do something similar now by either cutting out turkeys on foam or even brown construction paper. Feathers are pretty cheap all year round.

There are also a ton more ideas to be found on Disney’s Family Fun site!