Category: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

Big Life Journal is a site I regularly follow and also signed up for ttheir newsletters. It promotes mindfulness and growth mindset for kids and teens but there are a great deal of wonderful advice for parents to parent more consciously and more positively.

I found this cute turkey printable in my inbox the other day and immediately printed the black and white version. (Little L. is into colouring now.) Unfortunately, I cannot link the printable as it’s available only for those who are signed up for the newsletter. In the picture below your can see what parts it has.

So we started with the colouring, checking a real turkey picture for the body but then the girls just used their imagination and their favourite autumn colours to make the feathers. On the feathers we wrote what we love having in our lives, what we are grateful for. (In the meantime we talked about the body parts of a turkey, and colours, special colours like maroon.)

Then came the cutting and sticking together. It took quite a while because of the colouring, but there is a coloured version of it too – we do not have a colour printer, unfortunately.) Here are the final results:

While putting our turkeys together we chatted/thought a lot about what we are thankful for, what lovely things and great people are in our lives. For a long time we haven’t had any fun, creative, holiday-related activities in English with the girls, just everyday conversations. However, now it was a great time to spend together in English in a productive way.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Thanksgiving story bracelet

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

The Thanksgiving story bracelet project has been sitting around for few years now. I totally fogot about this cute and memorable storytime activity. As I was reorganising my autumn activity box I came across with this well-prepared but overlooked task. I was more than happy to introduced it to the girls before this year’s Thanksgiving.

What you need:

  • a printed copy of the story
  • 8 coloured beads (white, blue, green, black, brown, red, yellow, orange)
  • neutral colour of pipecleaner ( we used white, but elastic fishing line could be good)

How you make it:

Opening the story

I started to read the story and when a colour was mentioned they threaded that colour of bead onto their pipecleaner. (At first we used the elastic fishing line but it didn’t work out for us.)

As the story went on more and more beads got onto the pipecleaner. The kids had to pay attention to the story as the colours represented certain ideas, happenings in the Thanksgiving story.

I didn’t make the girls retell the story, but with older kids you can use the bracelet for reciting the happenings of the first Thanksgiving.

A fun and creative activity that my girls really enjoyed and they also learned a lot about the background of this important US tradition.

Thanksgiving cootie catchers

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

We’ve had some fun Thanksgiving activities from the Internet in the last couple of years, but I wanted something new for E. that involves a little reading. I didn’t know she’ll be so excited about the cootie catchers that she’ll make her own. But let’s not run ahead.

Recently I’ve found this great blog: brendid.com where you can find a free printable section. There are many cootie catchers to make for several occasions, like Thanksgiving, Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s day or Halloween to mention a few.

 

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Bren even explains how to fold a cootie catcher if you happento be as ignorant as I was in the field of cootie catchers.

When I handed E. the cootie catcher I was taken aback how excited she became.

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She was reading the questions and jokes by herself and running around the flat to ask everybody (even her 23 month old little sister.) I wish I had taken some photos.

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So the following day we made our own cootie catchers, which was totally E.’s idea. So we took out some coloured paper and started to fold our own cootie catchers.

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E.’s cootie catcher

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Then we numbered the outside and wrote on the inside. I decided to make a fortune-teller concerning the winter holiday season with Christmasy, snowy pictures,

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E. was writing questions about her imaginary Waterland and drew fish, dolphins, whales and anglers on the inside of her cootie catcher.

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Then we played with each other’s cootie catcher, then our native English nanny needed to answer the questions, after that Little L. too.

E. loved the idea of cootie catchers so much we definitely do it again and again and again.

(If you can’t read the questions in the pictures – she wrote them I didn’t help her at all!:

  • left pic: Why did the angler catch the shark?/Why did the whale get scared of the hypodoo? – hypodoo is an imaginary fish)
  • right pic: What kind of dish do anglers make? / Why is the sun gone in Waterland?
    Your answers can be submitted in the comment section. And you can win whatever you ask for if you know the answer 😉 )

 

Thankful booklet

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

This year I wanted to make something special for the girls to make them feel grateful for all those people, experiences and fun they’ve had during the year. So I decided to make them a book of thanks.

I needed some coloured construction paper and some pictures of important people, places, happenings that I printed and glued on the half-cut A4 sheets. I also laminated the pages for durability. I punched the upper corners and used a scratch book clip to hold them together. I also added some notes for E. to read.

Both of them appreciated the booklet and we talked a lot about the pictures.

I hope in the future we can add some extra pages to collect all the amazing things in their lives.

Happy thanksgiving!

Crafty Mommy workshop 2. – winter edition

Published on by nonnativemommyLeave a comment

The winter workshop took place in the middle of November, before Thanksgiving, so that we could cover some Thanksgiving crafts apart from Christmassy and winter activities.

The workshop aimed to help mums with winter fun ideas, whose kids are about 2-3 years old, but 4-5 year-old children would find them enjoyable too.

There were 4 major topics that we covered (and this time we managed to cover them all)

  1. Thanksgiving
  2. Santa/ St. Nicholas
  3. Christmas
  4. Winter
I’m not writing about the details only the ideas I shared. if you have any questions about the activities please do not hesitate to contact me either in the comment section or via email: nonnativemommy@gmail.com
This time I got some photos from the mums taking part in the workshop. Thanks!
 

Thanksgiving activities:

  • Cheerio corn

Santa:

  • Santa’s hat out of popsicle sticks

 

I made this free printable so just click and print it. Colour it with your child if you wish and glue a cotton ball on Santa’s beard every day until Christmas. As we celebrate on Christmas Eve there are only 23 places to stick the cotton balls on.

Christmas activities:

(I can’t find what we made so I have no picture of it. Here is a photo of the original source I’d found the idea at and you can go and have a look at it if you click on the link above)

  • Paper plate Christmas door wreath

Originally I planned it with pompoms but we prepared it with pasta. I would have gone for a red base but E.’s choice was orange.

  • Pine cone ornament
I prepared this colour matching activity that you can download on the link above. You just need some coloured buttons, pom poms or M&Ms to place on the printed buttons of the Gingerbread men. A simple colour matching task.
The last figure is left empty to draw coloured buttons of your child’s choice or use it as a play dough mat if you want to take further on this activity.
 
Other winter crafts
  •  Cotton pad snowmanpict00023_jpg
  • Decorating mittens
    (We did mot finally make this activity but here is the link where you can see the details) UPDATE: We made the mittens (among other activities) after reading the lovely book The Mitten by Jan Brett
  • Popsicle snowflakeddf2e-pict0206