All Sorts of Turkeys!!

We continued the Turkey theme into Wednesday. The apple turkeys are cute, easy, and designed to be a fun table decoration for the holiday season. One of the turkeys didn't even leave the classroom. Oops. I take that back. It did leave the classroom...just in Sini's tummy. I had many questions about when they could eat them. So, I'm thinking that they aren't on your tables as a symbol of what a great preschool your little one goes to....but, I understand. Next year I'll use less tempting goods as the turkey's feathers.

(Building our Turkey Centerpieces, using an apple, toothpicks, Fruit Loops, marshmallows, raisins, candy pumpkins, candy corn, and Twizzlers). There's a rule about cereal...if it's broken, you have to eat it. What I got a little confused about was how could marshmallows be "broken"-since they disappeared faster than the cereal.

Today started something like this..."Preschoolers--today we are going to make more turkeys. What do you think about that?" Their faces told me everything!

Our Wednesday class is a group of 5 boys. So it's sometimes easier to wrangle fewer kids for some of the more complicated projects. Somewhere in the last 10 years of doing preschool, I came across this idea but never had the ambition or neurotic disposition to try it...until today. Melting crayons onto a hot griddle sounded like a lot of fun and required a few supplies that I had in the drawers...coffee filters, extra crayons, a large counter griddle, and assorted construction paper. Really basic ingredients for an awesome little craft. So when I plugged the griddle in and explained to the boys that we had to be very careful so no one would burn their fingers...I was the only one stalling to get started.

[What?! You never thought to let your babies color on a hot griddle with their crayons? I thought every parent was doing that....] And to be perfectly honest, I never even thought to do this with my own kids---but the results turned out pretty cool and we didn't have any burnt fingers or even near misses--how about that!

We started by putting a piece of paper on the griddle and then the coffee filter. Then one at a time, the boys colored the filter with whatever colors they wanted. The heat from the griddle melted the crayons as they colored and it spread like oil paints. I've never seen this before and it was so cool!! We wanted colorful turkey feathers and the boys loved watching the colors melt.

If the boys had had their way, they would have made a whole flock of turkeys each. Even the papers used to protect the griddle turned out beautiful. They caught the residual color. I kept them and I'm going to put them in their books in the "art" section. So something to look forward to :)

And just when we thought we were "turkey-ied" out...there was one more surprise. Sucker Turkeys. That bird is so practical and easy to craft around!! Sucker Turkeys are my favorite treats to make in November! They are fool-proof, everyone loves them, and they are so darn cute!! For our Wednesday class...we were up to our eyes in turkeys. I hope your little turkeys enjoyed all the fun things that we worked on in preschool. I could have done a month dedicated to the national bird...it's not actually the national bird (the bald eagle is)--but it might as well this time of year.