You will receive smiles as you present this super easy and healthy Thanksgiving snack for kids. Make it in seconds, and then watch the children in your home enjoy.
Are looking for a way to stretch out Thanksgiving a bit longer by providing snacks leading up to the big day? Perhaps you are searching for a Thanksgiving kid appetizer to keep them satisfied while all the parents are preparing the main meal. This peanut butter and pretzel turkey treat is the answer.
Peanut allergies? Why not try one of these other fun (and mostly healthy) turkey snack ideas for kids.

Easy and Healthy Thanksgiving Snack for Kids
Whether you are looking for an Thanksgiving after school snack or a special yet healthy treat on Thanksgiving day, I’m convinced your kids will adore this treat.
With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I thought it would be fun to turn one of our favorite snacks, peanut butter and pretzels, into cute little turkeys. With the addition of candy eyeballs, a nut beak and a Craisin gobble. This is so simple but so fun.
Materials Needed to Make this Easy and Healthy Thanksgiving Snack for Kids
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- peanut butter – I like to buy it with no sugar added
- twist pretzels
- pretzel sticks
- candy eyes
- Craisins
- cashews or another kind of nut
- cookie dough scoop
365 Everyday Value, Organic CreamyRold Gold Tiny Twists Pretzels,Rold Gold Pretzel Sticks, 1Wilton Candy Eyeballs, 56 CountOcean Spray Craisins Dried Cranberries,Planters Lightly Salted Deluxe Whole
How to Make Peanut Butter and Pretzel Healthy Thanksgiving Snack for Kids
- Take your cookie dough scoop and scoop out a ball of creamy peanut butter. Eject it onto a serving plate.
- Add eyes to the front of the ball.
- Insert nut under the eyes.
- Shape Craisin into a tear-shaped gobble ands stick it beside the nut nose.
- Add 3 pretzels twists on top of the peanut butter ball as shown.
- Fan out pretzels sticks behind the pretzel twists.
- Serve with more pretzels so that everyone can dip the pretzels into the peanut butter.
As noted below, this post is an update of a post originally written in 2013. These peanut butter and pretzels turkeys probably looked a bit more of a cross between a hedge hog, porcupine and a turkey back then. Look at my little babies enjoying their turkey treats. They’re six years older now! Yikes.
I loved seeing the smiles on their faces as they see the whimsical fun in food. It was such a simple thing to do, but they were super excited about how I vamped up a snack we have all the time.
The only down side was when the girls turned away from the snack and Corban ate up all the candy eye balls. I made sure they got more because they’ve got a mama who is watching their backs.
Thanksgiving is such a family centered holiday, and it is fun to lead up to it more than usual. You can do this through crafts, snacks like these peanut butter and pretzel turkeys, conversations about thankfulness (that’s a link to my lessons on thankfulness or gratitude in my character building series) and finding fun ways of embracing the fall flavors.
Fall really does have to be one of my very most favorite times of the year.
I wanted to add one more image (above) from my original post just so you would get an idea of what they look like if you only have pretzels sticks available. Still adorable, but I do like my updated version better.
Video Tutorial of Creating this Easy and Healthy Thanksgiving Snack for Kids:
Here’s a video to show how super easy this snack is to create:
Note: This post was originally written in November of 2013. I’ve been working to update pictures and improve quality of past posts. I hope you enjoy this updated version.
Easy and Healthy Thanksgiving Snack for Kids
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp peanut butter
- 3 pretzel twists
- 9 pretzel sticks
- 2 candy eyes
- 1 craisin
- 1 cashew
Instructions
- Take your cookie dough scoop and scoop out a ball of creamy peanut butter. Eject it onto a serving plate.
- Add candy eyes to the front of peanut butter ball
- Add cashew nose below eyes.
- Shape Craisin into a tear drop gobble shape and stick beside the nose.
- Add three pretzel twists in an arch on top of peanut butter ball.
- Behind twists, add pretzel sticks in an arch.
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