JeNNspeak: The Turkey Project

My daughter has a family homework project to create a turkey for her Kindergarten class, something that will ultimately be used as a table decoration during the reception that will follow the Kindergarten Thanksgiving program. We made our turkey from a coffee can.

I think he turned out pretty cute!

To make a turkey like ours, you'll need a small coffee can,
masking tape, shoe polish, feathers, googly eyes, a pipe
cleaner, and construction paper.

First, use the masking tape to tape some feathers on one
side of the can for tail feathers. Then continue to cover
the entire can with strips of masking tape.

Use the shoe polish to color all of the tape and give
your turkey a nice brown color.

Add wing feathers and a second layer of tail feathers with more tape,
and stain the new tape with more shoe polish.

We used brown construction paper for a turkey head, yellow
for a beak, and red for the waddle. Then added
googly eyes.

We cut two identical pieces from the brown to make the head and glued them together with a pipe cleaner between them to give the head some stability. Then we folded back each side on the neck to make flaps to tape the head to the can with more masking tape, again staining the tape with shoe polish. We put some shoe polish on his neck and head as well, to give a little extra texture look to the plain paper.

The best part... I only had to purchase feathers. The rest we already had in the house.

This is not a project new to our family. We also made a turkey when our older daughter was in Kindergarten. We made her turkey with a clay pot, paper feathers, and modeling clay. I still have it and use it as a Thanksgiving decoration with fall flowers inside the pot.

Her feathers are made with double paper and a pipe cleaner
with a piece of burlap around the pot to hide the bottom of the
feathers and create the body.