turkey games- preschool style

This week is Turkey week at preschool. We've already done the Thanksgiving story, so it's all gobble gobble this week. Here are a few Turkey related games and songs I have ready.

I am reading Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey. It's a cute little story about children going on a field tip and sneaking the turkeys out under their shirts. I thought after that book, we'd sing this song using pieces to go on my glove. I will encourage the kids to sing with me. It's always better than me singing alone. This is a counting up rhyme. Those are more rare and almost always preferred for three year olds.

"One little turkey running through the barnyard, farmer's looking everywhere far and wide.
Here comes Mr. farmer, don't let him see you. Stomp stomp, flap flap, run and hide. Two
little turkeys running...."

Then I have 6 turkeys cut out in different colors. I will pass out two feathers per child. The turkeys will lay on the floor in the middle of our circle and we will sing this little song to collect the feathers back in.

(to the tune of Mary wore her red dress)
"Turkey wore her red feathers, red feathers, red feathers. Turkey wore her red feathers all
day long."
(We will continue with green, brown, orange, red and purple)

When all the feathers are in, we'll count them and compare the different numbers. I may lay a fabric numeral on top of each turkey to show the number of feathers. With older kids you could add different sets of feathers, etc.

Then, I'll pull one color from each and make up this guy. We will sing:

"turkey wore his rainbow feathers, rainbow feathers, rainbow feathers. Turkey wore his
rainbow feathers, all day long."


Assuming I still have everyone's attention (frankly there may be someone under or on top of a table at this point), we'll play 'which one is missing.' I'll maybe sing the directions, because: 1. I love to sing and 2. things sung are more interesting to three year olds (only one of those is true).

"Turkey feathers, turkey feathers, green, purple, yellow - red, orange and brown. Close you
eyes and wait for me. Now open your eyes and tell me, which one is missing."

At a separate time in the morning, we will attempt this activity. I will give the kids a little cup of cereal. I would have thought to use bugles, since they look like cornucopias, but I don't always this that far ahead. Candy corn might have been ok too. I will call out specific numbers for them to cover up. We will work on colors too. You could easily program these with shapes, letters, number sentences, etc.


I made up a larger version to put on the flannel board while the kids have their own smaller one. I think this will be easy for a few, but there are just as many that will be lost, perhaps on a table somewhere. Last week we had a similar corn activity and there were a few spots for each number. That was very confusing to them. Hopefully this simplified game will go better.

Here are a few other activities that I found online that didn't make it in today's plans.

Turkey name feather game

Alphabet turkey activity

I've linked up at some of these fine blogs.