Fine Motor Skills and Patterns - Turkey Style

One of my husband's most vivid memories of the New York City Marathon is of a woman in Brooklyn passing out orange slices to the runners.  She said something like, "This is how we do it Brooklyn style".  Why am I telling you this?  Well, I want to add the word "style" to every sentence now and you can see that in the title of this post. 

Anyway, I made a turkey because it is almost Thanksgiving (as if you didn't know that) and because it seemed like a good way to sneak in some fine motor skills and pattern work for R. 

First, I placed a bowl on a cereal box and traced around it.  Then, I happened to have one piece of light brown craft foam so I placed a cup on it and traced around that for a smaller circle.  (Craft foam isn't necessary.  Another piece of cereal box cardboard or some brown construction paper would work.)  I cut out both circles.  The large circle will be the body of the turkey and the smaller circle will be the head.

Next, I hot glued googly eyes, a craft foam triangle beak, and a slightly trimmed red balloon snood onto the small circle.  Then, I hot glued the small circle onto the large circle.  I also hot glued pipe cleaners that I cut to make legs onto the large circle. 

Squeezing clothespins is a great fine motor skills activity.  From what I have read, squeezing clothespins strengthens hands and helps preschoolers develop the muscles needed for proper pencil grip and control.  Clothespins also happen to be very appealing to R, and probably most kids her age (4).  I found the colorful plastic clothespins at Dollar Tree a while ago, but I see them there all the time.  Any clothespins would work (you could even paint the plain clothespins different colors or hot glue feathers onto them!), but when I saw these in the drawer, I thought they would make nice feathers for a turkey.

I am so long winded today!  So, the point of this turkey is to have R create different patterns of "feathers" around the turkey and to work on those fine motor skills.