In October, I (Litsa) had promised a ‘turkey’ craft to a group of first graders—my daughter’s class. In November, I saw my month quickly disappearing with the week’s routine and the day’s daily mundane tasks. My daughter kept ‘ruffling my feathers’ to know what turkey craft we were going to make with her class so I spent time on Pinterest in bed late one night looking for something THANKSGIVING related that I could recreate with seventeen first graders. A craft that wouldn’t break the budget—and one that would involve ‘texture’ and ‘upcycle’ and ‘gratitude’ too!
When I saw this turkey book on Pinterest, I knew it was a craft that I would enjoy recreating with my daughter’s first grade class. I quickly screen shot the project and received permission from her teacher to gather materials to start the next day.
We folded brown paper bags and cut them accordingly (bottoms off and sides off) so that we had only the rectangular sections of the paper bags left. Next, we folded the paper bags into mini brown books. The pages were stapled together with a stapler on the left hand side.
Then, students added the googly eyes with Elmer’s glue and a beak and a wattle that were free cut from cardboard. The excess cardboard was saved to create feathers for the turkey books. These feathers were also free cut.
Over the weekend, the students cut out turkey feathers from cereal boxes, game boxes, cracker boxes, etc. The following week, we assembled their feathers onto the back of the turkey books with tape and Elmer’s glue. The students used markers to write what they were thankful for this season.
Materials: Brown Paper Bags, stapler, Elmer’s Glue, Googly eyes, scissors, recycled boxes or thick magazine pages, and/or cardstock, poster board, markers
These gratitude journals are perfect keepsakes to create with a first grade class (or other grade level), a group of Sunday school students, your family, and/or around the house on Thanksgiving week.
I enjoyed the process of creating these little turkey books with my daughter’s class. Additionally, I enjoyed all the little words and images that her personal book held between the little brown bag pages. We’ll continue to add to her book this week by cutting out words from magazines and/or pictures to fill the little pages but more so to create conversation—-and spend time together this season!
Have a gobble good time recreating these turkey gratitude journals with your little turkeys!
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