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 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.