After months of Fall and Halloween themed lessons, it seems I only have a week to cram in Thanksgiving. This post is a review of five popular Thanksgiving activities to delight preschoolers. Warning: smiles are contagious!
Play Dough
First up is my Play dough appetizer tray. I have seen so many fabulous pins on Pinterest of Play dough trays, like this one from Pre-K Pages, so I grabbed a tray at the Dollar Tree and put my own spin on the contents. I utilized my craft supplies and bought decorative leaves and alphabet letters to enhance the activity.
We have worked on requesting, commenting, and following directions while making unique turkeys. Some used Popsicle sticks for legs, others used pipe cleaners and decorative leaves to create feathers for their crafts. The Popsicle sticks have also come in handy for cutting the dough. Hands down, this activity has been highly preferred among many (including caregivers.)
Sorting Pie
Next, is my sorting pie from Learning Resources. What better way to prepare for Thanksgiving than to sort some fruit into a pie? The game includes two sets of tongs for choice making and multiple choice boards for matching colors, objects, or numbers. My clients aged 2 through 7 enjoyed requesting more, naming colors, commenting, and matching objects to pictures using this super, cute pie.
Tablecloth
Another hit during Thanksgiving was my paper tablecloth. I scored this find while looking for Halloween clearance items at Target, so I grabbed a few to use across a couple years. My younger clients have colored while listening to auditory bombardment lists containing target speech sounds while my older clients have played tic tac toe or earned a chance to color as a reward for completing work.
Farm House
What’s a speech and language session without some pretend play time? I paired my farm house with Fisher Price Thanksgiving pieces to talk about sitting at the table, eating, and bringing food from the farm to the dinner table. You can pick up some shredded, yellow paper to use as hay for the barn and easily dispose of it between clients. This particular toy set used to be much more affordable than it is now. You may still find a sale on Amazon or score it in a Thrift shop sometime.
Interactive Books
Years ago, I purchased a collection of interactive Thanksgiving books from Jenna at Speech Room News. This collection contains books that target action words, commenting about likes and dislikes, and other thematic vocabulary. I have used these colorful books to engage busy toddlers, assist in sentence completion tasks, and promote answering questions about action words using speech generating devices.
Nanette Cote
Nanette Cote is an ASHA certified speech pathologist, published author, and private practice business owner with 30 years experience.
Such great ideas! My little ones (and older ones!) would love the playdough idea.
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Love the play dough turkeys and the paper tablecloth! I'm loving your private practice!
I also used the Dollar Tree tray – will have to try play dough next time!
All Y’all Need
Always such wonderful activities. They are fun and rich with language. I bought two of those tablecloths years ago. They are so large I still get to use them every year!