Shape Sorting Turkey Sticky Wall- a Thanksgiving Activity for Kids

If you are looking for a last minute Thanksgiving activity for the kids, this one is it! Great for groups, perfect for playing for a few minutes and coming back to it later, no messy paint, and so easy to clean!

If you have leftover googly eyes from the Monster Smash activity from Halloween, this is a great use for them!

Here’s What You Need

• Felt

• Googly eyes

• Con-Tact paper

• Painter’s tape

• Foam shapes

• Scissors

• Glue dots (my personal favorite recently), glue, or hot glue/hot glue gun

Set up

5-10 minutes

1. Cut the Con-Tact paper to size and tape up to the wall, sticky side out.

2. Assemble the felt turkeys. I drew shapes free hand with very crooked lines and tried to not let my imperfect lines bother me too much. Good thing kids don’t care! I made triangles, circles, and squares for the heads and bodies out of brown or tan felt. All of the turkeys had a small orange triangle beak, a free hand abstract maroon or red wattle, and googly eyes. Use your adhesive of choice to join the turkey parts, keeping in mind that a traditional glue bottle will require a bit more time to dry.

3. Stick your finished turkeys on the sticky wall.

4. Place foam shapes in a bowl and let the kids go to town building out the turkey feathers, arms, legs, or just surrounding the turkey with the corresponding shape.

Clean Up

1-2 minutes

1. Collect the foam shapes at the end of the day or play session. We keep a bowl out for a few days and let the kids come back to this activity several times.

2. When you are finally done with the sticky wall, throw it away.

Note: I keep the turkeys and the foam shapes in a separate zip top mesh bag in our seasonal decor bin, so I can easily set this activity up every year!

I absolutely love sticky walls that give room for more than one child to play at a time!

This is the most mess you will get from this activity! Easy enough to clean up in a minute, as long as you don’t give free access to the whole container of 3,000 shapes. Guess who made that mistake the first time we used foam shapes!

The kids have loved the turkey shape shorting sticky wall for several years now, so I hope your family loves it too! I find it’s a great activity to set up if you are cooking or cleaning, especially on Thanksgiving Day. Festive, but not fussy, and no giant mess to clean up at the end.

I hope you give this activity a try. Let me know in the comments if you do!

Looking for other activities? Check these out:

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