Well this morning we finished our centerpiece turkeys. We got the instructions from Messner Holiday Library Thanksgiving Fun by Judith Hoffman Corwin. It is a book I found at the public library. It had a few crafts I liked but not too many. These turkeys were very easy. You need a toilet paper roll, paper (I used card stock), newspaper and googly eyes and glue (and we used a piece of tape). You could also use paint on the toilet paper roll, but I took the lazy way out and covered it in paper. The toilet paper roll becomes the neck and head. You use a piece of paper rolled with the newspaper stuck inside for stability for the body and cut the tail feathers out of two different colors and add the wings. As you can see Hazel and I had different ideas where the wings should go. Neither of us chose the place the book suggested though Hazel's were closer. Mine are on the body instead of the tail.
Next we read The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri. I used Rachel's squirrel from I HEART CRAFTY THINGS (she shared it at our Sharing Saturday link party, which is still open if you want to share with us). She got the squirrel template from All Kids Network. We decided to gather the same food as the busy little squirrel. So we made a tree trunk for his home and added the food we saw him gather in the book, bird seed, acorns, apples, corn, and berries. The book starts with the leaves are falling so we also glued on some falling leaves. We used real bird seed, acorns and leaves, a Christmas tree ornament apple, and some fall decorations of miniature corn and fake berries. 
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The next thing we did is we talked about Thanksgiving. I made up some memory games for Thanksgiving. This time I did not put the clear contact paper on them since I don't think they will get played with enough to get that messed up and they are easy enough to make. Hazel is at the age where she doesn't really remember much about Thanksgiving from the past so I thought I could introduce her to the whole story using these cards. Then we could play with them and keep talking about it. I did this in Word and you can download it Thanksgiving Story Match Game. If you need another format, please let me know. It is easy to save it as a pdf as well.
I also made a Thanksgiving dinner game, so we could talk about the food she might see at the Thanksgiving table. I figured this might get her excited to try some of it even if she hasn't had it before or didn't like it before. Again I did this in Word and you can download it at Thanksgiving Dinner Match Game Again let me know if you need it in a different format. To make the game I cut the cards out and cut cardstock into 3 inch by 4 inch rectangles and Hazel and I glue sticked the pictures onto the cardstock.
