Kids Craft: Turkey of Thanks

Here is a great craft I heard about from my son. They are doing this at school. This craft teaches the vital lesson of thanksgiving and gratitude.

Here’s what you need:

• Empty tissue box
• Construction paper in fall colors
• Markers
• Scissors
• Glue
• Wiggly eyes (optional)

Here’s what you do:

1. Wrap your tissue box with brown construction paper. If it is square, leave the hole at the top, and leave it open. If your box is rectangular, then you’ll want to stand it on it’s end so that it is tall. Again, leave the hole open.
2. Then draw the turkey’s head with face, eyes, beak, and wattle using your markers.
3. Trace your child’s hand prints on several peices of paper in a variety of fall colors. Cut these out and glue them to the back of your box to create the turkey’s tail.
4. Each day, have your child write something that they are thankful for (if they do not write yet, write this for them) and place it inside the box.
5. On Thanksgiving, you will have a great way for your child to share all the things that he or she is grateful for when you allow them to empty the turkey and read what is inside.

This craft reminds our children of the importance of taking a moment to celebrate the many wonderful things in our lives, the many things that we have to be grateful for. This also encourages gratitude to be a part of every day. If we live our lives in a spirit of gratitude, we are likely to receive more to be grateful for. We are also much less likely to take things for granted, even the little things. Happy Holidays!!!

Kids Corner: Thanksgiving Favorites

It's been a while since we did a Kid's Corner. When I mentioned it to my kids, they were anxious, as always, to share their favorites. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we decided to share our favorite Thanksgiving books and movies.

Thanksgiving Books:

• A Turkey for Thanksgiving
• Too Many Pumpkins
• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (Peanuts)
• Scarecrow Finds a Friend
• Pioneer Thanksgiving, A: A Story of Harvest Celebrations in 1841
• Franklin's Thanksgiving (Franklin)
• Disney's: Winnie the Pooh's - Thanksgiving
• Turkey's best Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Movies:

• Winnie the Pooh - Seasons of Giving
• Garfield: Holiday Celebrations (Garfield's Halloween Adventure / Garfield's Thanksgiving / A Garfield Christmas)
• Alvin's Thanksgiving Celebration
• Peanuts Holiday Collection (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown / A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving / A Charlie Brown Christmas) (Deluxe Edition)

We look forward to hearing what your favorites are. Please send a comment and let us know. Have a safe and happy holiday season.

Kids Craft: Thanksgiving Mosaic

Many of the world’s great civilizations used mosaic art to depict important images in special places. During my travels to Italy in college, we visited Venice. The cathedral there had a dome over the alter that beautifully depicted religious scenes and icons in mosaic tile. While we can’t create something of that scale with our kids, we can help them to see the beauty in mosaic art and gain an understanding of the effort that went into these great works.

Here’s what you need:

• Tempera, craft, or poster paint (fall colors)
• Pumpkin seeds or dried beans
• Glue
• Card Stock or poster board
• Small disposable dish and disposable fork

Here’s what we did:

1. We used dried red beans (because we had them in the house). However, any dried bean will work. A variety of beans can be used unpainted, or one type of bean painted for color. We painted ours with craft paint. I squirted some paint into the bottom of a disposable bowl, poured in the beans, and let the kids use a disposable fork to stir and mix the beans into the paint until they were all coated in paint. We did not get a perfect coating on all the beans, but we decided this would make our mosaic more interesting. We spread the painted beans out on a sheet of paper to dry, making sure that no two beans were touching while drying.
2. While our paint was drying, we took a 9 x 12 inch sheet of card stock. (This was actually part of the packaging from one of the kids’ Halloween costumes.) We cut it into fourths. My son and daughter each drew a fall/Thanksgiving picture. My son drew the Mayflower, and my daughter a leaf. I drew them a turkey and a pilgrim hat on the remaining two fourths.
3. Once our beans were dry, we pulled them off the paper where they were drying. Then we squirted glue onto our pictures, in small sections. Carefully placing colored beans onto the glued sections, we proceeded to finish our mosaics.
4. Once all the beans were glued into place, we let our pieces dry.

A Few Quick Tips:

1. If your kids are really young, you may want to use bigger beans like lima beans or butter beans. These will be easier for little fingers and will cover a larger space more quickly.
2. Remember that your drawings will be colored in with small objects and these will restrict the detail possible. Remind your children of this when they are drawing their pictures so that they can use large, generalized shapes as opposed to very detailed line drawings.
3. Begin your mosaic with the most important item. For example, on our pilgrim hat, we began with the top of the hat. I squirted glue onto the top portion that was going to be black and we filled that in. Then we did the gold buckle. Following that the red stripe, then the brim.
4. If your kids are getting tired, or you fear that their patience will not last to completion of the project, you can remind them that they can space their pieces out a little. Again, on our pilgrim hat, the beans are very close on the hat, but spread out some on the background.

If you would like resources for additional craft ideas here are a few books that might spark your interest:

1. All New Crafts for Thanksgiving (All-New Holiday Crafts for Kids)
2. Crafts For Thanksgiving-Trd/Pb
3. 175 Easy-To-Do Thanksgiving Crafts (Creative Uses for Recyclables)
   

As always, there are limitless variations possible. You can do this project again and again. Change theme, do a Christmas one. Change materials, try pebbles, beads, buttons, tiles. You’re only limiting factor is your imagination. So use your imagination, and have fun!

Kids Craft: Hand and Foot Print Turkey

Here’s another one from my childhood. This adorable turkey uses your childrens’ hand and foot prints. It can be used as a decoration and then saved from year to year as a keepsake. Best of all, no two will be exactly alike, so each of your kids can make their own unique Thanksgiving turkey.

• First, take a sheet of brown construction paper and trace your child’s feet. You can do this with, or with out shoes, but you will have a more rounded turkey if you leave the shoes on.
• Cut out the feet. Glue the heals, one on top of the other, allowing the toes to be spread apart slightly. This will give your turkey a fuller body.
• Trace your child’s hands. Cut out several in a variety of fall colors.
• Glue the hands to the back of the feet, these will become your turkey’s tail.
• Now cut out and glue a beak, wattle, eyes, and feet onto your turkey.

Additional options:

• When tracing and cutting, use the reverse side, the one you have not written on, as the front of your turkey.
• The eyes can be drawn, made with construction paper, or wiggly eyes can be used for fun.
• If your turkey is flat (no wiggley eyes), you can glue the entire thing to an 11 x 17 sheet of paper and laminate it to make a place mat. Or you can just laminate the turkey to save from year to year.

Enjoy this craft, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Kid’s Activity: Cornucopia Confusion

Here is a great Thanksgiving game for family gatherings. It is a variation of Musical Chairs. Here’s how you play:

1. Create a circle of chairs using one less chair then there are players.
2. One player will be the leader.
3. All players, except the leader will take a seat.
4. The leader will then name each player using typical Thanksgiving dishes to name the players. For example: turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie, stuffing, corn, etc. The leader may name more than one person a particular name.
5. Once each player is named, the leader will call out two dishes. For example: pumpkin pie and corn. The players assigned these names must switch places as quickly as possible.
6. The leader continues to call out combinations of dishes in succession until he or she decides to call, "The cornucopia has tipped over." At this time, all players hop of and find a new seat, including the leader. The player left with out a seat becomes the new leader. And so, the game continues.

Our family is large enough to play this game at home, but we also enjoy it with a group on Thanksgiving with other family members are there. We hope you enjoy this activity with your family.

As will most of our activities and crafts, this activity too can be altered to fit other occasions. We've used it at parties, calling it Birthday Boogy. In this instance, we named the players party related items like: candles, cake, presents, pinata. The first leader was the birthday child. This is only one example as you can rename it for any gathering.

Hope you enjoy the game. Happy Thanksgiving!

Children’s Book Review: The Turkey Ball

Written by David Steinberg
Illustrated by Liz Conrad

This festive book is an easy fast read. Through its excellent use of rhythm and rhym, it gets the reader actively involved in the spirit of the book. It is as much fun to read as to hear. The author makes great use of onomatopoeic words, then translates them for the reader. The illustrations throughout the book are bright, colorful, and imaginative. You’re kids will love this book. It is a fun Thanksgiving read.

Kids Craft: Thanksgiving Hand-print Wreath

Are you and your family thinking of Thanksgiving yet? It is right around the corner. (Only three weeks away.) Here is a great craft idea for Thanksgiving that will get the whole family involved. And, as usual, there are a variety of things you can do with this, by just using your imagination . . . and a few simple tips. This idea, while aimed at Thanksgiving, could be done for a variety of holidays with only slight variations.

Here is what you’ll need:

• Colored paper (scrapbook or construction), craft foam, or felt (all in autumn colors)
• Poster board, cardboard, or foam core board.
• Scissors and/or exacto knife
• Glue
• Embellishments - These can be buttons, berries, pom poms, pipe cleaners, ribbons . . . You name it, you can use it.

Here’s what you’ll want to do:

1. Cut out the shape for your wreath. You can make your wreath a circle, oval, or even a square. The choice is yours. You’ll do this with the Poster board, card board, or foam core.
   
2. The three materials suggested were chosen for your so that you would have a material choice that would work with the type of project you were wanting to do. If you are wanting a quick fun project, that you will not be keeping from year to year, then use card board or poster board. Both of these are disposable and either inexpensive or free. If you would like something a little nicer, use the foam core board. This can be found with poster board and matte board material at your local craft store. If you can not find it, a sales associate should be able to help you. This is basically two pieces of poster board sandwiched around a 1/8 inch layer of foam. It is very durable and can be cut with an exacto knife.
3. Next, trace the hands of each member of your family. And cut out the shapes. If you are doing a large wreath with a small family, then you will need more than one pair of each person’s hands. Cut multiples if needed. For this, you will use either colored paper, craft foam, or felt in autumn colors.
4. If you are wanting to do this fast, easy, and with out much expense, you will use construction paper. If you want a nicer quality, with out huge cost, and may not keep this from year to year, then you may want scrap book paper. If you will keep this for several years, then you will likely want to use craft foam or felt.
5. If you do not want to pay for craft foam or felt, but want a nicer finished product, then you can use a technique called Paper Toile. To do this, take your hand prints cut from scrapbook paper and lay them front side down, onto your computer’s mouse pad. Then take a rounded surface similar to the tip of a sharpie lid and trace around the handprint. You will do this about an 1/8 to a 1/16 of an inch form the edge of the paper. Begin softly, and practice on a scrap page, till you get the right pressure. If you are patient, you will be able to create a rounded effect on the edges of your handprints. This will give them a little extra depth and add a nice finished detail to your wreath.
6. Once all of your handprints are cut out, lay them out on your wreath so that your wreath shape is covered. Now you can glue this down.
7. It’s time to embellish! It’s also time to use your imagination. You can change the whole mood of your wreath based on how you embellish it. Buttons placed in small clusters of 1 to 3 around your wreath would have cute, hand-crafted feel. If you used pipe cleaners (maybe swirled into a circle) and pom poms you are creating a much more lighthearted and whimsical feel. Or you could use berries and bows. This would create a sophisticated affect. The choice is yours.

And, as always, you are only limited by what you can imagine. Lay out your options, if you don’t like the look, don’t glue them down, change them to something else. Most important of all, have fun!

Kids Activity: Thanksgiving Turkey Hunt

Thanksgiving in America traditionally involves a turkey. Each year, we take our kids on their own personal Turkey Hunt. They LOVE it. And we have a blast too.

First, we cut construction paper into fourths. (You can use index cards if this is easier and readily available. You can also use regular printer paper or loose leaf paper. Whatever you have on hand will work.) Then we give each child three or four pieces of paper, and take a few pieces for ourselves. We then make a turkey on each. Some years we’ve gotten carried away with our crafting and made 3-D turkeys instead.

Here are some ideas for your turkeys:

1. Trace your child’s hand and let them color it in, drawing a beak and feet.
2. Trace their hand on a sheet of construction paper, cut it out and glue it to your sheet.
3. Let them use paint and a hand print to make their turkey.
4. Let them draw or color the turkey.
5. Use craft items like craft foam, feathers, wiggly eyes, and pom poms, and felt to build a small turkey on the page, or independent of the page.
6. If you want, you can print small clip art turkeys and let your kids color them.
7. You can use fancy lettering to decorate the word Turkey if you don’t want to draw or make one.
8. Or, if you’re feeling really silly, you can use pictures of your kids and call them your “little turkeys”.
9. As always, your imagination is the limit to what you can do.

Once our turkeys are complete we need cages to keep them in once we’ve caught them. We’ve used brown paper sacks, shoe boxes, tissue boxes, and even ziplock bags for this purpose in the past. Pretty much anything will work. If you are using something disposable, you can decorate it or draw bars on it like a cage.

When our turkeys and cages are complete, we choose our first Guide for our Turkey Hunt. Our Guide hides all of the turkeys in the forest, one room of the house. Once they are all hidden, the Turkey Hunt begins. Our hunters, the other children or players, begin to search for the turkeys. As they are found, our hunters bring their catch to their Guide. The Guide will keep the captured turkeys pinned up according to the hunter who has caught them.

Once all the turkeys have been found, we count how many each hunter caught. The hunter who has caught the most turkeys becomes the Guide for our next hunt. And the game begins again. The kids love it. They have fun making a mess and making their turkeys, then they play with them over and over again until Thanksgiving has come and gone.