Simple Thanksgiving Sensory Small World

Every year I roast up our pumpkin seeds from the Jack-O-Lanterns.   They usually go pretty quick around here.

This year, though, it seemed the seeds were kind of woody.  They hung around for over a week, and I was about to pitch them in the trash, when I decided to use them for simple Thanksgiving Sensory Play.

Those seeds could also be used in some other fun Thanksgiving crafts & activities.

This Thanksgiving activity would be perfect after doing our Mayflower craft.

Thanksgiving Sensory Play

To make this sensory bin for Thanksgiving, I grabbed our big round plastic tub and added the roasted pumpkin seeds.

It just didn’t seem like enough at the bottom of our large tub, so I decided to add some of our colored rice using the fall colors of orange, green, and yellow.

Then I added a strand of colorful beads, reminiscent of the beads the settlers and Native Americans may have traded.  I also added some turkeys from our animal collection.

I knew my husband had a couple (affiliate link) Playmobil Native American figures in his old collection, but I was surprised to find a teepee as well.

Since we didn’t have any actual pilgrim characters, I settled on a Playmobil knight, and covered his silver armor with black construction paper and made him a little hat.

I sprinkled a tiny bit of cinnamon across the seeds and added a few of our clear plastic pumpkins from our earlier fall sensory bin.

The kids could NOT wait to get their hands on it!

I loved watching them recreate parts of the Thanksgiving story that we’ve talked about.

I also loved how the colored rice swirled with the pumpkin seeds, and at some point plastic dishes were involved as they dished up quite a colorful Thanksgiving feast.

This simple Thanksgiving sensory is the perfect use for some of those leftover pumpkin seeds.

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• Preschool Turkey Craft
• Build a Wigwam 
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