Thanksgiving Ideas: Thanksgiving Centerpiece Craft
Turn feathers and pine cones into tabletop turkeys!
Submitted by
Kayla Chong
Kayla Chong
Looking for some crafty Thanksgiving ideas to add a little holiday flair to your dinner table? Forget napkin rings and linens—try something unique: Have your kids create pinecone turkeys to deck the table for Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble!
- Pine cones:One per turkey.
- Feathers:Available at most craft, dollar or mass-merchant stores.
- Felt:Any color you've got will work just fine!
- Googly Eyes:One pair.
- White poster board
- Craft Glue
- Scissors
- Twigs:Optional, if you want your bird to have legs.
- Hot-Glue Gun and Glue Sticks:Kids and hot glue don't mix, so make sure you do all the gluing!
- Markers or crayons
- Glitter
Have your kids collect some pinecones from the yard. Live in a city or in the tropics and don't have easy access to fir trees? Go to a nearby park or buy some Ponderosa pinecones online to help the founders' Girl Scout troop. (So helpful! And so much less fattening than buying their cookies!)
Plug in your hot-glue gun so it's out of your kids' reach and insert a glue stick.
If you want your turkey to have legs, have your child flip the pinecone onto its side so you can hot-glue some small twigs onto it. (She may need to make a turkey tripod and glue on three legs to get the thing to balance properly.)
Next, have your child draw a silhouette of a small turkey head and neck onto a piece of the poster board and then color it in. (If you're artistically challenged, find a picture of a turkey online or use one of the zillion turkey coloring pages your kid brings home from school in November as a guide.) She can sass it up with some glitter if she's making a fancy turkey!
Get your kid to cut the wattle (yep, the flap of skin that looks like your mother-in-law's neck ... oh, sorry, that was mean!) and beak out of felt.
Have her glue the felt pieces onto the head and neck cutout.
Next, have your kid stand back while you grab the hot-glue gun and stick one googly eye on each side of the turkey head.
Hot glue the head and neck onto the pinecone.
Have your kid use craft glue to glue on a fan of colorful tail feathers.
If she's inspired, encourage your kid to make a turkey for every place setting. Then she can make a name card for each place setting and you can hot-glue it on!- Hand her some silverware and plates when she's finished. Why not get her to set the table while she's at it?
- If your kids just gobbled up this Thanksgiving idea and they want to create more Thanksgiving-themed place settings, have 'em make Little Hands Turkey Place Cards from NickJr.com.
Thanks to Elizabeth Woodson
Submit!
