Thankful Turkey

If you dropped by my link party this week, you will have seen this colorful turkey craft by Mindie from her Born Again Farm Girl site.

It spoke to my heart and said, “Make this craft with your grandchildren. Like — SOON!”

So, I did. But I modified it a wee bit to make it a wee bit easier for my young granddaughter to make.

Here’s what you will need to make my version of this thankful turkey:

• brown construction paper
• paint chips
• googly eyes
• glue gun
• brad
• scissors
• paper hole punch

You’ll notice in the picture above that I have a turkey body pattern. We started out using that pattern. But, I didn’t like it. It was too big. And, I couldn’t see the colorful turkey feathers very good.

I could have made the turkey body smaller. But I didn’t. I decided to use a circle for the turkey body. So, Dear Readers, I didn’t make a pattern for you to have to make this little thankful turkey. Simply trace around a drinking cup so that you have a circle that is 2-3 inches in diameter.

Next, cut out the circle body.

Take a paper hole punch and punch a hole near the bottom of your circle.

Cut the paint chips into about 1 inch-wide strips. The brand of paint chip that I got had the name of the paint in the middle of the chip. So I cut an inch wide strip from each side so that the name wouldn’t be on the turkey feather.

Punch a hole near the bottom of each turkey feather.

Push a brad through the brown construction paper. Then push the brad through the paint chip turkey feathers.

When you have all of the feathers that you want on your turkey, flatten the brad to hold the turkey feathers on. Use a glue gun to add googly eyes. Cut out a beak from either a piece of yellow construction paper or a yellow paint chip.

(Ahem. My granddaughter’s favorite color is pink. She wanted her turkey to have a pink beak. Great! I support her creativity. Then, she wanted one big googly eye and one small eye. Great! I support her creativity.)

Here’s the finished turkey.

I know that there aren’t very many days before Thanksgiving. (I know, I know. I should have shared this at the first of the month. Oh well. ) So, you might want to write something in each box of 2-3 feathers so that by Thanksgiving Day, your thankful turkey is filled to the brim with the blessings in yo

ur life.

I hope you have a very thankful Thanksgiving!

Pssst! I have some free printables for Thanksgiving: word searches and then some mazes, word searches and scrambled words. You might want to print those up for your grandkids to do on Thanksgiving day.