Thanksgiving Sensory Activities

October 28, 2023 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

There are so many fun sensory experiences that come around Thanksgiving, with lots of things to see, smell and touch. These Thanksgiving themed sensory activities are fun to do at home or with small groups of kids.

Of course the dominant smell/taste of Thanksgiving you probably think of is pumpkin, and I found recipes for pumpkin fluff from Teaching Mama, pumpkin play dough from Wildy Wonders, and pumpkin slime from My Joy Filled Life.

You can use that scented play dough to do pumpkin pie fraction math, with printables from Fantastic Fun and Learning. Or make a turkey with your dough and other things you might have lying around like feathers, eyes and little bits of foam or other found objects. Learn how in this post from Mama Papa Bubba.

Get more pumpkin-specific sensory experiences and ideas here: pumpkin sensory activities. (This post was more for Halloween but pumpkin endures through the seasons, doesn’t it?

If you’re not a pumpkin fan you can try apple pie playdough instead, which uses apple pie spice instead of pumpkin spice. This recipe is from The Best Ideas for Kids, but you can use your favorite playdough recipe and add food coloring and spices of whatever sort you like to make a fall playdough.

Another great scent and sensory experience of the season comes form cranberries. You can make a cranberry-scented playdough with this recipe from Learn Play Imagine, or do some cranberry STEM and sensory activities with these ideas from Little Bins for Little Hands.

There are lots of different possibilities for making sensory bins with seasonally appropriate fillers like corn (I Can Teach My Child) or Indian corn (Still Playing School), brown paper (Mrs. Plemon’s Kindergarten) or even fall-colored pasta (Not Quite Super Mom).

Some fun things to add to your fall or Thanksgiving sensory bins include measuring cups, fake pumpkins, acorns, real or fake leaves, little cups, etc.

Are you looking for the best sensory toys and activities for your child? Explore our comprehensive resources to enhance your child’s sensory play and development. Check out our curated Amazon Idea List featuring top-rated sensory toys and items, and don’t miss our expertly written articles on sensory activities. Start creating fun and educational sensory experiences today!

Have you read?

Books About Bugs Through the Seasons

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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