OT Activity of the Day:
Hand Turkey
Target Age Range: 4 and up
A hand turkey is a pretty standard Thanksgiving craft. While this is a seasonal staple, it’s also a great way to work on bilateral coordination, scissor skills, fine motor control, and handwriting.
If you have a younger child, you may need to trace your child’s hand for them, tracing their hand may be too difficult. If that’s the case, there’s still plenty of skill sets that are targeted. For the younger kiddos, you can have all pre-made feathers or you can practice cutting out one or two of the feathers. By the age of 4 your child should be able to cut along a line so this is a craft that would be right up their alley. If you don’t want to use construction paper as feathers, you can always color the “feathers” with crayons! When you ask a child to color inside the lines you are asking them to use their fine motor control, so this is a perfect task for your preschoolers!
If you have an older child, Kindergarten and up, you can absolutely have them trace their own hands. This promotes bilateral coordination, a skill that is necessary for classroom success. After they trace their hand, they can either cut out the feathers or color them in, it’s their choice! If your child is even older, you can even have them write a sentence or two about what they’re thankful for. If you want, you can write one thing you’re thankful for on each feather!
Enjoy!