For this lesson you will need the book, "Five Silly Turkeys" by Salina Yoon. You will also need five turkey die cuts that will stick to a felt board or that have something on the back so that they can be hung up on for the students to see. For the craft you will need brown and red tempera paint and a paintbrush, and red, yellow and orange feathers, enough for each child to have four or five feathers. Each toddler will need a sheet of white construction paper, crayons, a wiggly eye and some glue.
Gather the toddlers around you and read the story, "Five Silly Turkeys" by Salina Yoon. Toddlers will love the fun rhyming text of this book about five turkeys doing silly things. After you have read it through once, read it again using the die cut turkeys. Put them up one at a time and have the toddlers practice counting them each time. Point to each turkey as you count.
After the story and the counting, let the toddlers make their own turkeys. Give each child a sheet of white paper, a wiggly eye, feathers, crayons and glue. To make the turkeys you will need to paint one hand of each toddler. Paint the thumb red and the rest brown. Then help him press his hand onto the paper with fingers spread to make a hand print. When the paint dries, he can glue feathers between the fingers to make the turkeys tail and draw on a beak and a wattle. Then he can glue on the eye. Hang the finished turkeys onto a bulletin board for a cute Thanksgiving display.
To extend the lesson, give each toddler her own set of five turkey die cuts. Read "Five Silly Turkeys" again on another day and let the toddlers use the turkeys to count along. Next they can glue their turkeys to a piece of paper and color a background around them. They can use the turkey pictures to practice counting to five.
For a turkey- themed science lesson, show the class a few pictures of real turkeys or read a nonfiction book about turkeys, such as "Turkeys" by Hollie Endres or "Little Tom Turkey" by Frances Bloxam. Then make a list of a few facts about turkeys. Some facts to include might be that baby turkeys are called poults and some of the parts of a turkey like the wattle and the snood.