Holidays

Turkey Art Projects for Kids

October 15, 2018 By Terri Thompson

You can never have too many Thanksgiving craft ideas. Am I right?

But, maybe you want to do some fun Thanksgiving art. Why don’t you get creative this Thanksgiving with these fun turkey art projects for kids.

I love that these projects use so many fun materials to create art. They’re all inspired by turkeys but allow you to be creative and focus on the process.

Have some Thanksgiving fun when you try one of these turkey art projects for kids. Get creative with these fun Thanksgiving arts and crafts.

Keep reading below to find all of these fun turkey art projects. I’ve done my best to divide them by age, but I do think most of these projects will be fun for a wide range of ages.

Which of these Thanksgiving art ideas are you going to try with your kids?

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Turkey Art Projects

Create some amazing turkeys with this fun collection of Turkey art projects for kids of all ages.

Turkey Art Projects for Preschoolers

Turkey art projects suitable for kids under 5, but older kids will enjoy them too.

Fork Painted Turkey Craft For Kids

Photo Credit: www.iheartartsncrafts.com

Use fork painting to create the tail of this paper plate turkey.

Turkey Tracks Turkey Art with Kids

Photo Credit: fun-a-day.com

Make turkey tracks art with this fun printmaking project.

Puffy Paint Turkeys

Photo Credit: www.naturalbeachliving.com

Paint a turkey using this fun DIY puffy paint.

Do A Dot Thanksgiving Craft for Kids

Photo Credit: www.theresourcefulmama.com

Create your turkey's tail using Do-A-Dot Markers.

Colorful Turkey Art Activity That Focuses on the Process

Photo Credit: stayathomeeducator.com

Use feathers and paint to create this amazing and fun turkey.

Bubble Wrap Printed Turkey Craft for Kids

Photo Credit: www.craftymorning.com

Use bubble wrap printmaking to create this fun turkey.

Watercolor Coffee Filter Turkeys

Photo Credit: typicallysimple.com

Use watercolors to paint coffee filters which make a colorful and pretty turkey tail.

Marble Painted Turkeys

Photo Credit: www.paper-and-glue.com

Use a marble painting technique to make the feathers for this turkey.

Feather Painted Turkey Craft for Kids

Photo Credit: www.craftsonsea.co.uk

Paint with feathers to create these pretty turkeys.

Turkey Art Projects for Older Kids

Thanksgiving art projects that are most suitable for elementary kids (or older).

How to Draw & Paint a Thanksgiving Turkey

Photo Credit: www.deepspacesparkle.com

Learn how to draw and paint a pretty Thanksgiving turkey.

Draw a Cartoon Turkey

Photo Credit: artprojectsforkids.org

Learn to draw a cartoon turkey with this simple art lesson.

Easy to Draw Turkey

Photo Credit: artprojectsforkids.org

Make a lovely watercolor turkey with this fun drawing lesson.

Thanksgiving Turkey Salt Painting

Photo Credit: www.naturalbeachliving.com

Use a salt painting technique to create this fun turkey.

Black Glue Turkey Art Project

Photo Credit: iheartcraftythings.com

Create with black glue to create these vibrant turkeys.

More Fun Thanksgiving Activities

Gratitude Conversation Starters

Fun Cranberry Activities for Kids

Printable Thanksgiving Word Searches for Kids

12 Turkey Crafts for Thanksgiving

Recommended Resources for Thanksgiving Crafts

If you’re looking for easy crafts, I love the limited addition Thanksgiving Box from Green Kid Crafts. It comes with all the supplies and instructions you need to make some cute Thanksgiving Crafts. We’re big fans of Green Kid Crafts boxes. They’re fun, easy, and contain only natural and sustainable materials. And, if you’re not interested in their Thanksgiving Box, there are plenty of other art and STEM boxes (including a monthly subscription) to choose from.

Find the Thanksgiving Box here.

Check out all the other boxes here.

Do you want to do more activities with your family?

Join our fun Facebook community, Creative Family Fun for Busy Families, for daily activities that are great for kids and families. We’ll chat, share, and have fun. It’s a safe and private place to share ideas for family and kids activities.

I’d love for you to join me! Just click the link below, request to join, and answer the questions (they’re easy, I promise). Come join the fun! Join the Creative Family Fun for Busy Families community here.

Cardboard Tube Spider Craft for Halloween

October 10, 2018 By Terri Thompson

I’m the designated spider killer at our house.

Anytime anyone finds a spider, they come find me. Apparently I’m the only one that that isn’t terrified by these little creatures.

Not only am I not terrified, I actually find them quite interesting. Not kidding. And sometimes a little bit cute. Not kidding either.

So, I thought I’d make them so cute that even my kids would appreciate them and came up with this fun idea: Cardboard Tube Spider Craft for Halloween.

Spiders don't have to be scary, especially when make this fun and simple kids craft, a cardboard tube spider craft for Halloween.

Disclosure: Craftprojectideas.com provided some of the supplies we used to make these spiders. The idea and pictures are my own.

Supplies Needed for your Cardboard Tube Spider craft:

Cardboard tubes: toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls
Black paint
Scissors
Black fuzzy craft sticks (pipe cleaners)
Googly eyes

How to make your cardboard tube spider craft for Halloween

Start by cutting your cardboard tube in half (or quarters if using a paper towel roll).

Then, on opposite sides, use a sharp instrument to poke four holes per side. Grownups – please do these first two steps yourself!

I used the tip of a sharp pair of scissors to make my holes. You just need something to punch through the cardboard.

Now it’s time for the kids to take over.

Use your black paint to paint the outside of each tube. Make sure you paint over your holes.

Of course, you don’t have to stick with black here. Use any color you want for a group of fun and funky Halloween spiders. If you do this, use colorful pipe cleaners for the legs too!

After the paint is dry, thread 4 pipe cleaners through the holes. Take one pipe cleaner and thread in one hole, through the middle, and out through the hole directly across from your first hole.. Your 4 pipe cleaners will make 8 legs.

Once you have them all the pipe cleaners threaded, bend and arrange your pipe cleaners to look like spider legs.

For the final step, attach your googly eyes.

When we made our cardboard tube spider craft, some of us used 2 eyes per spider. My youngest daughter decided to be scientifically correct and use 8 eyes on her spider. I think I like that one the best.

Once you’re done, you’ve got some fun spiders for Halloween.

Stand them up on a shelf or attach string and dangle them from the ceiling.

Either way, they’re a fun addition to your Halloween decorations.

See, I told you I could make spiders cute!

Craft supplies you may need:

In addition to items pulled from your recycle bin, here are some supplies that will help you with your cardboard tube spider.

Are you looking for more activities?

Spider Web Wreath Halloween Craft for Kids

October 4, 2018 By Terri Thompson

I’ve got to give most of the credit for these Halloween wreaths to my 7-year-old. She’s got some great ideas.

I had a much different wreath in mind and only got as far as the first step before she took over and made the perfect spider web wreath.

I love it when the kids take over. They’re ideas are always so much better than my own!

And because my daughter called the shots, the craft not only turned out cute, but it was also a fun process for her.

Grab a paper plate and some yarn to weave your own web with this fun and spooky Spider Web Wreath Halloween craft for kids.

This Halloween spider web wreath is fun to make and appropriate for preschoolers as well as elementary-aged kids.

It’s easy to adapt to differing skill levels and is open to a child’s individual creativity.

Supplies Needed

Paper plate
Scissors
Orange paint
Orange yarn
Clear tape
Plastic spider rings

How to make a Spider Web Wreath

Start by cutting the middle out of your paper plate.

If you’re working with young kids, you may want to do this step ahead of time, since you’ll need sharp scissors to do this task.

Flip your paper plate so that the bottom side is facing up and then paint the entire wreath orange.

If you don’t want an orange wreath, another fun option would be to paint your paper plate black and use orange yarn for your spider web.

Let the paint dry.

Once your wreath is dry, cut a long length of orange yarn (several feet!). It needs to be long enough to wrap around the plate many times for your spider web.

Tape one end of the yarn to the back of your wreath with clear tape.

Grab a paper plate and some yarn to weave your own web with this fun and spooky Spider Web Wreath kids Halloween craft this October.

Start wrapping the yarn around the wreath in all different directions. Go back and forth, sideways, diagonally, and around and around.

Keep wrapping until you reach the end of your yarn piece.

Secure the other end of the yarn to the back of your wreath with tape.

Finally, you can add your spider to your spider web wreath. (Or do like we did and add many spiders!)

We found that using small pieces of yarn to tie our spider rings to the web worked best. Add as many spiders as you want. We had a few busy, busy spider webs!

Note: This post was originally published on October 17, 2014. Updated and republished on October 4, 2018.

Find the supplies you’ll need

This fun wreath project only needs a few easy to find supplies. Here’s some great options for you:

Do more activities with your family

Halloween Shape Poems Writing Activity

October 2, 2018 By Terri Thompson

Most of the projects we’ve done for Halloween have been crafts.

We do love crafts, especially holiday crafts. But, I did want to sneak in a little learning with some Halloween Shape Poems.

My 2nd grader can get overwhelmed quite easily when it comes to writing, but she’s always responded well to poetry.

She gets excited about writing poetry, so many of our at-home writing projects are about poetry.

When considering after school projects, it’s important to keep your kids interests in mind. I don’t want to contribute to burn out!

Create the poetry invitation

I kept the set-up for this project easy by going with simple Halloween-inspired shapes.

I don’t have any printables for you this time because I drew the shapes on construction paper.

We used a ghost and a pumpkin. A witch’s hat and candy corn are a couple of other simple shapes you could consider.

Don’t worry about perfection. My pumpkin is a bit wonky, but I think I’m the only one that noticed!

Draw your shape, outline it in black, and cut it out.

Then, take a ruler and draw straight lines approximately 1-1/2 inches apart. My girls still write big, so I wanted to give them plenty of room. Plus, I didn’t want to overwhelm them with too many lines.

Write your Halloween Shape Poems

The fun thing about these Halloween shape poems is that you already know your subject. Your subject is the shape of your paper.

Sometimes choosing a topic can be the biggest hurdle to jump when it comes to creative writing.

The only rules about shape poems are that the poem should be about the shape and it should fit inside the shape. Other than that, anything goes!

Get a little creative when you write these fun Halloween shape poems. It's a fun Halloween writing activity for elementary kids.

Each girl wrote at their own level. My 2nd grader decided to write a rhyming poem and had fun with some silly rhymes.

My kindergartner just wrote a few lines about pumpkins. She came up with the lines and I wrote them for her. This is not a project I would have done with her alone at this point, but because she always wants to participate, I gave her extra help to keep it skill appropriate.

I love the poems the girls came up with and they are quite pleased with it themselves.

They’ve already added music to the ghost poem. If they keep that up, I may have to start calling them aspiring song writers.

Note: This post was originally published on October 21, 2014. Updated and republished October 2, 2018.

Get inspired to write with some Halloween poetry

Here are some great Halloween poetry books to share with your kids that will provide inspiration for this writing activity.

Do more fun activities with your family

Cardboard Tube Halloween Mummy Craft

September 27, 2018 By Terri Thompson

These Halloween mummies are spooky; they’re kooky; and they’re a whole lot of fun!

Gah! Just look at those googly eyes!

Your kids will love making this simple Halloween mummy craft just as much as my kids did. The process is simple and you probably already have all the supplies you need.

Grab some simple craft supplies and recycled materials for this cute kids Halloween craft, a Cardboard Tube Halloween Mummy craft.

So, let’s gather supplies, grab the kids, and start crafting for Halloween.

We got out the empty cardboard tubes again, along with the googly eyes that we used for another fun set of Halloween characters.

But, this time we made a cute Halloween mummy.

Grab some simple craft supplies and recycled materials for this cute Halloween craft: Cardboard Tube Halloween Mummy craft.

Supplies needed for your Halloween mummy craft

Empty cardboard tube
White tissue paper torn into strips
Sponges (for spreading glue)
Glue
Water
Googly eyes

How to make your Halloween mummy craft

To prepare, you will want to thin your glue with water. I used regular school glue combined with water in a 1-1 ratio. Mix it well and it will work similar to ModPodge.

If you don’t thin the glue, it will be too thick to work properly for this project.

We used small sponges to spread our glue. I wanted the girls to be able to spread a lot of glue quickly and the sponges did the trick.

Spread the glue on your cardboard tube and start wrapping your strips of tissue paper around it.

Once you have one layer of tissue paper on, spread some glue over top of your tissue paper and wrap some more tissue paper around your tube.

The water/glue mixture will not get gloopy or clumpy. If you dab your sponge on top of the tissue paper instead of smearing, your tissue paper will not tear.

And, if your tissue paper does tear, you won’t notice. We’re making mummies after all!

Once you are satisfied with your wrapping, set your tube aside and walk away until it dries. It will look like a wet mess (see above picture), but once everything is dry, you’ll have a mummy.

After your mummies are dry, glue on the googly eyes. This time, use regular-strength glue and not your thinned out glue for the eyes.

That’s it! Your Halloween mummies are finished! Aren’t they cute?

Combine your craft with a fun mummy book

Round out your craft time with a fun Halloween book about mummies. Here are some you may enjoy.