Now That the Halloween High is Over... Let's Talk Turkey!

Hello friends!  Cara here to visit with you again, from Creative Playground!  As you can tell from the title of my post, I'm here to talk turkey, but first I have some pictures to share with you...

Halloween is my favorite holiday by far; can you tell?  Ladies and gents, I have over 20 different wigs in my Halloween arsenal!  No joke.  If I could wear a different wig everyday, I would for sure.  It's just SOOOOO fun.  Give it a try; you'll be addicted!

Another thing you might notice from the pictures above is that I adore Melonheadz, an illustrator from Teachers Pay Teachers.  I finally got a chance to meet her in Vegas this past Summer and she went above and beyond my expectations.  She's a very humble and quiet lady, that has a rags to riches story that'll make you cry.  So if you're a TpT'er, it CAN BE DONE!  Also, I recently asked her to make me as a Melonheadz clip.  This is what she sent me today.  I'm absolutely giddy to have her draw me.  What?  I'm a Melonheadz clip?  Get outta here.  No, really.  Look...I'll show you:

Look at my necklace!  She got it down to even the details of that!  If you look closely, it's a letter G for my son Garyn.  He is also Autistic and the necklace I'm wearing above has an Autism symbol of a puzzle piece on it and a silver heart.  OMWhat?  And I'm artsy-fartsy and love to draw, hence the markers and paper chain.  Melonheadz is my idol-4-life...

OK, now let's talk turkey!  Are your kids still spinning from their candy buzzes too?  It really didn't matter that it was on a Friday; today's what... Thursday?  They're still buzzin' from that darn candy!

So I was thinking of a craft for Thanksgiving that would be different (for me at least!) than what I usually do, which is BOR-ING!  I knew I wanted to come up with something that involved the family; there was something about that Melonheadz necklace that I kept thinking about over and over.  Isn't your family one of the most Thankful pieces of your life?  Unfortunately, it's not for a lot of our little ones.  But most of them do have someone they can call family.  

What's the fall-back-on-Thanksgiving-teacher-craft that we ALL have done, at least once?  Yup, I'm also guilty... Trace your hand.  Slap on a waddle and call it a turkey.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING kids!  Well, I'm going to top that this year, do the same craft, and add a twist!

Here, take a look.  It doesn't look like much until you know what it's made of:

OK, so here's the special part... The hands used to make the turkey are from each of the members in the student's family!  So Mom, Dad, Granny, the dog, whoever the student lives with makes a print of their hands in different colors and those make the feathers!  Awesome!  It is the old standby that finally has some meaning!  Here are the materials you'll need and parts to cut out:

The turkey above is of my family and there are only three of us.  Garyn wanted to do the dog, but the dog had other ideas of what he wanted to do.  Wouldn't that have been cute though to have dog prints for the turkey's feet?  Hee, Hee.  The poem you see above I wrote; I know, I know.  I'm a teacher, not a poet.  I can rhyme though!  At the end of the post, I'll give you a link to the poem should you not be able to come up with a better saying or poem to attach to your turkey (yeah, right.  Don't worry, my feelings won't be hurt.  Just make sure you send it to me to use too for next year?  Deal?)

I also typed up this family letter to send home...

This letter is also included in the poem download, should you want to use it.  There are both pros and cons to sending home the paper.  Depending on your kiddos ages, they might not be ready to cut out five family member hand prints when they can barely hold the darn scissors.  You'll be doing prep work the day of the craft, so why not do it all ahead of time?  So I decided I'm going to precut different colors and send those home.  Or you could send home plain white paper and have families do their tracings and send those in.  It would just be easier to do it the first way for me.  If you have a different idea, shoot it my way with your poem too!  I'm ALWAYS open to suggestions of how to make my life easier!

Once the prints come in, we'll assemble the turkeys.  Here's a breakdown of the basic shapes needed:

I made the shapes basic because I plan to knock two birds out with this one...  Kids, today let's learn about turkey waddles AND heart shapes!  Yes!  Love to make my life easy!  So that's the theory behind the basic shape madness you see above.  Believe me, I draw clip art so my hand wants to jazz up that turkey like she's from Vegas, but my head says I'm ____ years old, not 7 or 8.  And I already know my shapes.

I haven't really gotten far enough to get to the presentation of this project yet, but I just know that as a Mom myself, I'd love to get a project like this that has such meaning to my entire family.  I hope you feel the same and can use a project like this with your kiddos this year or even with your own family at home!

I'd love to hear how you'd present this project...  Glue them both onto a larger sheet of construction paper?  Roll the turkey up in the poem and tie it with a holiday ribbon?  Please share your ideas in the comments below for us all!

Make sure to come visit me at Creative Playground and until later my friends,

Click here to download the poem and family letter printables!