Fall

Disguise the Turkey!

My son came home from kindergarten with a really fun activity–disguise the turkey! It is a picture of a turkey printed with instructions to disguise the turkey so that it doesn’t get eaten for Thanksgiving. What a fun activity! It gave my son a chance to really be creative and have fun.

disguise the turkey activity
Disguise the Turkey!

The disguise possibilities are endless! One child added large ears and an elephant trunk; another kid covered the turkey in popcorn and pasted a popcorn bag to the bottom of the paper. My son decided to hide his turkey in a leaf pile! We went on a leaf hunt outside and found a bunch of neat leaves in different shapes and colors. First my son colored his turkey with crayons. He chose a rainbow themed for his feathers 🙂 Then he glued leaves all over his turkey so all that was left exposed was the turkey’s face, peeking out through the leaf pile. It turned out so cool!

I found a picture of a turkey and made a PDF that you can download (Free) for your child to disguise the turkey too! My son’s turkey was printed on cardstock. That made it more stable for gluing things onto it. If you don’t have cardstock, you can always print your turkey on regular printer paper and cut it out and glue into construction paper, or even a piece of cardboard.

I hope you and your child have as much fun with this activity as we did! It is a great family project. We really had to put our heads together to think of a good disguise and we enjoyed our leaf hunt!

Animals, Fall

Turkey Books

preschool turkey books
Turkey Books for Preschoolers

It’s Turkey Time! Are you ready to say “Gobble, Gobble?” Turkeys are pretty cool birds. My son and I have enjoyed reading turkey stories and one non-fiction turkey book! Here are some of our favorites turkey books. We hope your library will have these available for you and your preschooler to enjoy together.

Turkey Books:

1.Turkey Train by Steve Metzger —

In this non-holiday story, a turkey family takes a train trip to the snow. Told in rhyming text with humorous illustrations, preschoolers will enjoy the turkeys’ travels and their snow-day fun! It might even inspire some to want to play outside too! Steve Metzger has several other turkey books too–check your library for his other books.

2. 10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnson —

This is a very silly, rhyming, backwards counting story featuring turkeys! The humorous illustrations add to the turkeys’ goofy antics. Preschoolers will enjoy the 10 turkeys sitting on a fence countdown. They will love as the turkey’s roller-skate and swing from vines until the fence breaks and none of them are left. While not a holiday story, this is still a good read for fall and good practice for calling out, “gobble, gobble, gobble!”

How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace

3. How to Catch a Turkey by Adam Wallace —

My son loves these books! The turkey story is one of his favorites. In this book, the turkey is supposed to make an appearance in the school Thanksgiving play, but it gets stage fright and runs away. The kids are racing around the school, trying to catch the turkey! The wily turkey manages to elude all of the students’ traps. The happy ending will be a hit with young readers 🙂

4. A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman —

A town is desperate for a turkey meal on Thanksgiving, but there are no turkeys to be found. They come up with an idea to lure a turkey to them by hosting a turkey-themed art contest, claiming they need a plump and perky turkey to be their model. Of course, they promise yummy food for the turkey who agrees. A clever turkey agrees to be the model. Knowing the town’s sneaky reason for holding the contest, the turkey ends up tricking all of the people and getting away with a tummy full of yummy food.

5. Turkey Goes to School by Wendi Silvano —

School is about to start and turkey is excited to join the boys and girls at start of the new school year. In preparation, turkey organizes a farm-yard school for the animals to practice their school skills–writing their names, counting, playing at recess–so that they will be ready to join the kids. Unfortunately, turkey (and the other animals) aren’t allowed to go to school. But school is so much fun and the animals don’t want to miss out! Turkey comes up several disguises to try and sneak into school, but the animals keep getting caught. Finally turkey comes up with a great plan to get into the school as the Farm Day band, where they sing “Old McDonald” with the class.

Turkey trouble by Wendi Silvano

6. Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano —

This is the hilarious story of a turkey who tries numerous disguises in order to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner. Each farm animal costume that turkey tries fails to completely disguise him! Just when it seems that all hope is lost, turkey gets his best disguise of all! You will laugh when you see turkey’s brilliant costume idea 🙂

7. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey by Lucille Colandro —

I find these books amusing and the preschoolers at storytime giggle at them. My friend, however, can’t stand the old lady’s silliness (I keep telling her that she’s not the target audience). My son agrees with me, so we added this one to our list. In this installment of the series, the old lady eats a bunch of Thanksgiving-themed items, including a turkey, a football, and a cornucopia among other stuff. What is this old lady up to? Why she’s making a Thanksgiving parade float, of course 🙂

8. Setting the Turkeys Free by W. Nikola-Lisa–

In this sweet ode to children’s imaginations, this story takes us on an creative adventure with handprint turkeys! Using craft supplies, the child builds a turkey pen out of popsicle sticks. Uh-oh, Foxy the fox is coming. Can the child save the turkeys? You’ll love watching this child’s imaginative story unfold! Your kiddo will probably want to make their own handprint turkeys after reading this 🙂

9. Animals on the Farm: Turkeys by Kari Schuetz —

My son wanted to learn more about real turkeys, so we checked out Animals on the Farm: Turkeys from the library. This book has awesome pictures and was written at easy-to-understand level without being boring. My son was so intrigued by how weird turkeys’ heads look! One of the cool things about this book is that teaches the names for a turkey’s body parts, like a wattle and a snood. See if your library has a copy!

I hope you and your kiddo enjoy these turkey books as much as my son and I did! To help cover the costs of this site, I’ve joined Amazon’s Affiliate program. If you buy a book through one of my links, then I get a small percentage of the sale. thank you for your support! Happy Reading 🙂

Turkey Puppet Craft:

Turkey paper bag puppet

Turkeys are so much fun! We made a turkey paper bag puppet to go along with all of our stories. My son had a blast running around the house with his puppet, yelling “gobble, gobble, gobble!”