Thankful Turkeys

If you search for Thanksgiving crafts, you are bound to find some sort of thankful tree or thankful turkey.  I thought about making many different thankful crafts and decided to keep it simple this year.  In the end, it provided an opportunity for C and R to think about what it means to be thankful and that is really the goal I had in mind.

We began by making turkeys.  C and R painted paper plates and a toilet paper roll brown.  When they dried, I hot glued the toilet paper roll to the paper plate.  Then we glued googly eyes, a craft foam hat, and a craft foam beak onto the toilet paper roll.  Why a hat?  Well, the turkeys needed something on their heads or they would look funny, so they got hats.  We cut a red balloon in half to make two snoods and hot glued them on to the toilet paper rolls. 

I cut a bunch of feathers out of construction paper and let C and R write what they were thankful for on the feathers.  Instead of writing for R, I had her draw pictures.  She did write one word though - Dad.  She knows how to spell Dad.  C wrote all of his with a little spelling help from me.  C glued the feathers on his turkey, and R decided to staple her feathers on because she wanted to use the stapler.   

Before they wrote, we did talk about what it meant to be thankful.  So what are a four year old girl and six year old boy thankful for? 

 R wrote and drew:  Dad, bugs, friends and neighbors, flowers, and pancakes.  

 C wrote:  family, Dad, house, food, and Kelly (our dog).  

Note that the only person they both mentioned is Dad.  He appears to be their number one person right now, and he is pretty happy about that.  I am trying my best to not be jealous, especially after R told me that I am currently in fourth place on her list of favorite people!!!!  For some reason though, when they wake up in the middle of the night, it is my name they yell!