Make a Felt Board and...

...a fun felt turkey to go with!

Yay!  I'm so excited that we're all feeling better and have had some time to get in a few of the terrific Thanksgiving activities I wanted to do.

I decided on this felt project first because I had made Big Brother a "build a jack-o-lantern" felt activity for Halloween and thought we could really use a felt board.  If you have preschool age little ones and don't have one, it was the easiest thing to make and has SO many applications!  

I used a piece of foam board and some left over felt that I had from other projects.  

  

Just cut your foam board to whatever size you'd like (or leave it big).  I opted to cut it down a bit smaller (ours is just slightly bigger than half the foam board)--making it large enough to do scenes on, but small enough that Big Brother could manage it. 

Lay your cut board on the felt and then hot glue the edges down on the back--pulling the felt as tight as you can.  Unfortunately, mine had creases in it (which I tried unsuccessfully to get it).  But, it makes no difference to the 3-year old! :)  And, for very little cost, we have versatile felt board to do all kinds of activities on.

Now, for the turkey:

The inspiration for this fun guy came from Naptime Crafting and the best part is, she shared a template.  So, using the template here, I was able to complete the whole project (board and all) in under an hour!

I glued the pieces of the body together (including body, head/neck, feet) but did not glue those to the board.  So, the turkey is one piece that Big Brother can place anywhere on the board.  Then, he can do activities with the feathers. He so loved getting his turkey bird all arranged:

 I love that there are so many learning applications with just a simple thing like this--counting, sorting, colors, sizes (there are two different sizes of feathers), matching games, patterning, etc. 

Now, my mind is swimming with all kinds of fun Christmas themed felt activities to make, so stay tuned!