It is that time of year when you search your heart and mind for all the blessings in your life that you are thankful for! We love Thanksgiving in our house! Every day of November leading up to Thanksgiving, I have the writing prompt “What are you thankful for today?” on my dry-erase board. I have my daughter do a very simple writing in her journal to start school each day. It includes the date, her full name, the week and day of school we are on, and her writing prompt. She is not a fan of writing, so this is my simple way of making sure she gets some enjoyable writing in every day of the week. I am hoping the more spelling words she learns, the more she will enjoy writing.
Every year we make a new kids Thanksgiving craft to add to our décor. This year we decided on a cute turkey that can sit in the middle of our dinner table! We also made it to where you can take its hat off and put in all the different things you are thankful for. I thought it would be so fun to hand out small slips of paper to all our family on Thanksgiving, and have them put what they are thankful for in the turkey. Then when we all sit down for dinner, I can read out loud all of the wonderful blessings that people are thankful for. It should be a special time together!
Let’s Make a Kids Thanksgiving Craft!
Supplies
- Gerber Puffs Container
- Black Solo Cup
- Elmer’s Glue
- Scissors
- Gold and Green Pipe Cleaners
- 2 Googly Eyes
- Cardboard (I used a cereal box)
- Red, Orange, and Yellow Foam Sheets
- Brown Felt
- Hot Glue Gun (for adult use only)
Step 1:
First you want to start by cutting out the beak from the yellow foam sheet and the snood from the red foam sheet. If you don’t know what a snood is, it apparently is the red skin that comes down over the beak of a turkey. I had no idea that was called a snood. Yay for Google! Set these aside until we are ready to put them on the body.
Step 2:
Next you want to draw feathers on the rest of the foam sheets. Make sure you keep at least half a sheet of one of the colors for a later step. It is completely up to you on how you want to arrange the different colors. We ended up cutting out 4 red, 3 yellow, and 2 orange. This is how my daughter wanted it to be, so we went with it!
Step 3:
To support the feathers, we traced around a bowl to create a half circle on the cardboard. I cut it out, and traced it again to make two pieces of cardboard to glue together. If you have blank cardboard, you don’t need to have two pieces. I cut out two, so we could hide the words on the other side by gluing the words towards each other. Use the half piece of foam sheet that was saved earlier, and trace around the half circle one last time. Cut it out, and save it for a later step!
Step 4:
Now you can glue your two pieces of cardboard together. Then it is time to arrange the turkey feathers the way that you like them, so that they will cover the half circle. Apply glue to the cardboard piece and attach your feathers! If you use Elmer’s glue for this part, it will take a while for it to dry before you can set them up on the back of the turkey. Set it aside to dry, or an adult can always use hot glue for this part. Attaching the feathers was my daughters favorite part though, so I am glad we used Elmer’s glue!
Step 5:
Now we are going to start work on the body! The body is what we need the Gerber Puffs container for. Start by cutting approximately 2 inch strips of brown felt. Then cut fringe half way into the strips on the long edge, just like you would for a piñata. Put glue on the edge that isn’t cut, and wrap it around the bottom of the container. Add about four rows of this size until you are half way up the container.
For the rest of the body, measure how much felt you need to cover it, with an overlap onto that last row of fringe you glued on. Cut it out, and add some fringe to one of the long sides. Then go ahead and glue it on with the top of it just under the top lip of the container. I needed some hot glue to make this last piece stay put.
Step 6:
Let’s move on to make the hat! Take your black solo cup and cut it into two pieces. One piece starts at the top two lines below the rim, and the other piece is cut at the bottom line of the cup. If you don’t have a black cup, I am sure it would be easy to paint it black. Once those pieces are cut, you wrap the rim piece around the edge of the other cup piece and glue it with hot glue to make the brim of the hat. Cut off any extra length you might have when wrapping the rim piece. Where it connects, make this the back of the hat. Then you can take a small piece of gold pipe cleaner and shape it into a rectangle for the buckle on the hat. My daughter wanted to add a little green spiral as well, so she wrapped a green pipe cleaner around a pencil. I glued these both onto the hat with hot glue.
Step 7:
Once the details of the hat are finished up, you should be able to flip the feathers over now. Glue the half circle of foam sheet onto the back of the feathers to cover up the cardboard. This will be the back of the turkey. Flip it back over and glue the body onto the feathers. I most definitely used hot glue for this, so it would stay put.
While the turkey is still on its back, glue on the eyes, beak, and snood. My daughter also thought it would be cute to add some feet, so she cut some out of yellow foam sheet. Glue the feet onto the base, and you are almost done!
Step 8:
All that is left is to cut a slot in the lid of the Gerber Puffs container. Then start writing all those wonderful things you are thankful for and drop them into your super cute kids Thanksgiving craft!
Before You Go
This kids Thanksgiving craft was so much fun for my daughter! She was so excited watching it come together. My toddler even got involved now that he can climb. He was sitting on the bar stool next to us making different shapes out of all the pipe cleaners. Now that he can climb, we definitely have our hands full! I am so thankful for every little moment though.
I know that sometimes it is hard to be thankful this time of year. We are all going through our own situations during the holidays. For many years, Thanksgiving was a holiday we couldn’t wait to be over with. We lost a family member, whose birthday falls right around Thanksgiving. Thinking about this, just hurt too much. Over the years, through a lot of prayer and healing we have learned to be thankful for all the memories we have with that family member instead of dwelling on him being gone.
My heart goes out to you this holiday season if you are going through hard times. I pray that you are able to be thankful for the little blessings you have this year. Hold your loved ones tightly, and thank God for them daily. Mostly be thankful for the wonderful love of God!