Cork Turkey – Easy Thanksgiving Crafts

I brought these corks up to the playroom to make something completely different but we didn’t have all the supplies I needed for that craft. After making a totally different Christmas craft ( I will post it later this week) we started cleaning up and inspiration struck! I grabbed a few more supplies and explained my idea to my daughter. She loved the idea and even suggested we use them to decorate our Thanksgiving dinner table. Here is how we made these easy Thanksgiving crafts.

Gather your materials. You will need some cupcake liners, wine corks, googly eyes, markers ( we used these smelly ones <– affiliate link), a little red and orange paper, glue, and scissors.

If you are using smelly markers you must, of course, check out the scents. These holiday scented ones are rad, although the red one smells so much like candy canes that I want to eat it.

Next fold the liners in half and color the liners with whatever colors you want.

While your child is coloring cut out the gobble and beak. Once they are all colored it’s time to add the glue to the corks. Don’t worry if it drips, it will dry clear.

Add the eyes, gobble, and beak.

Next add some glue to the cork and lay on the colored liners. Let dry.

 

Books About Thanksgiving

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A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman is such a cute and funny book about a town that needs a turkey and the hilarious lengths they go to to find one. The town is sadly outwitted by the turkey and end up eating shredded wheat for Thanksgiving. The illustrations kept my little man interested when he was a toddler but he only started understanding the dark humor at around 4. I love this book because of the humor makes me giggle. My son was a little off put by the idea of the townsfolk eating the turkey and was relieved when he escaped before they shoved him in the oven. I like that he is starting to understand that the meat he eats is actually a cooked animal, we take that for granted but for many young kids, this is a huge realization!

10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnston was a classroom favorite, it’s about as silly as a book gets and the kids had no clue they were actually learning about subtraction while listening to the crazy rhymes. This won’t explain the pilgrims, or talk about the Mayflower, but it will make your kids laugh! Very cute!

Twas The Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey was such a treat to read. It’s a reworking of the classic Christmas poem, with a Thanksgiving twist.  A bus full of kids head off to the turkey farm the day before Thanksgiving and are immediately enamored with the birds. When a child asks the farmer what the ax by the door is for…well let’s just say the truth is told and the kids fall apart. They don’t stay down for long though, the kids outsmart the farmer and their teacher to save the turkeys from the ax. Somehow the author finds a way to make the possible slaughter of these happy friendly, named turkeys funny. My son was giggling while I was kinda nervous that they’d get the ax! Great rhymes throughout this hilarious book!