A few people have requested art ideas for Thanksgiving that are not turkeys. Below are three example of activities.
One idea we use is to tie in healthy food to Thanksgiving. Usually, there is alot of focus on family dinners at this time of year. We collect grocery store flyers, and have children cut out pictures of healthy foods they would like to eat at Thanksgiving. We then have the children use these pictures to glue to a large piece of paper. Once it is dry, we either mac-tac it, or laminate it (depending on available resources) and send it home as their placemat for Thanksgiving dinner.
Another idea for Kindergarten (one you could use in any primary grade) is to have pumpkin seeds in your art centre. The children can create pictures with these, or for older students, you could have pre-made pictures they can glue the seeds to. To make the seeds more interesting, you can colour them with food colouring.
Finally, you could have dried leaves in your art centre. The children can do leaf-rubbings to create beautiful Fall pictures. These can also be laminated to send home as placemats.
Another idea is to put out fall colours in pie tins and cut up potatoes, and apples so they can do paint stamping onto construction paper.