Thanksgiving Pine Cone Turkeys

I’m reposting this fun Thanksgiving craft blog from last year.  Coming soon…we’ll do a project with a picture of mom or dad your child can carry to help ease separation anxiety. 

My mother-in-law suggested making pine cone turkeys, so I thought we’d give it a shot.  If you don’t have pine cones lying around the house, take your kids on a walk to find some, or just buy some.  I must admit that I had to buy some at Michael’s since it was wet outside and I wanted to do the project that day. They only had cinnamon scent-drenched cones, which are a little strong, but the kids didn’t mind. 

You will need pine cones, feathers, pipe cleaners and google eyes.  I bought some normal pipe cleaners and some sort of bumpy-looking ones that we cut up to use as turkey heads.  You could also just twist or bend the end of a normal pipe cleaner to form a head.  It doesn’t have to look perfect, you just need enough surface area to glue eyes on your turkey’s head. 

 

 

After we cut the pipe cleaner “head”, we twisted part of a normal pipe cleaner around it to affix it to the pine cone by wrapping it completely around it.   We made legs and feet from pipe cleaners too.  They don’t support the weight of the pine cone very well, but look cute.  Then, the kids just stuck feathers into the pine cones to make turkey tails.  You can have your children use glue, if you want the feathers to stay  put, by dabbing a little glue on the end of the feathers before you poke them into the pine cone.  It works pretty well just to stick them in too. 

Finally, glue some eyes on.  I bought google eyes that have adhesive already on them- what a great invention!

As usual, the project evolved into making crazy pipe cleaner/feather creatures once the turkeys were complete.  The kids were busy for an hour, needed very little help and the turkeys are very cute.  Good times.

Tags: craft, feathers, kids, pine cones, thanksgiving