Thanksgiving Book

The other day we were reading one of our favorite books, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, when I realized we could write our own Thanksgiving version!

Eva told me what she wanted each thing to see and I typed it up and printed it out.  After printing, I drew in the pictures and Eva has been helping color them in.

When she finishes I will staple everything together but we've been having fun reading it as is.

Thanksgiving Place Settings

We are going to Eva's cousins' house for Thanksgiving dinner so we are having a special Thanksgiving breakfast at home instead.  In preparation we made placemats and napkin holders.  The placemats are just sheets of card stock decorated with stickers.  Eva wrote everyone's name on them too.

After all three were complete, I covered them in contact paper for easy cleaning.  Unfortunately, camera flash and contact paper do not go together well so I don't have any decent pictures.
For our napkin rings we decorated toilet paper rolls with paint dabbers.

When they were dry I cut each roll in half and now we have some pretty fancy napkin rings.

I'm planning on making this yummy french toast for us to eat while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Thursday morning.

Paper Bag Turkey

I completely forgot to post this guy!  We made him last week.  Eva helped me stuff a brown paper lunch bag with newspaper and then she cut out feathers I drew on a few of her old paintings.

We glued them to the back of the bag, tied off his neck and head with string and added eyes, beak and feet.  His waddle would not stay on no matter what we tried!  He now resides by our November calendar and leads us in our turkey poem:

A turkey is a funny bird,

his head goes wobble, wobble.

And the only thing he ever says

is gobble, gobble, gobble!

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving week!  We don't have a ton planned for this week but we have lots to be thankful for.

Crafts
Placemat- we are heading to Eva's aunt and uncle's for Thanksgiving dinner so we will make a placemat to help keep their table clean

Thankful Chain- we'll decorate the lounge with links listing all the things we are thankful for

Napkin Rings- toilet paper rolls will become fashionable table accents for our feast

Pumpkin Pie- we'll transform a paper plate into a scrumptious smelling pie craft

Activities
Beast Feast- we won't be the only ones grateful for food this Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Lunch- we'll have our own little celebration with traditional Thanksgiving foods

Hide the Turkeys- this game has been so popular we are carrying it over into this week

Thanksgiving Book- we wrote a Thanksgiving story based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear What So You See that we will be coloring and reading throughout the week

Books
            

stART- A Plump and Perky Turkey

In Teresa Bateman's A Plump and Perky Turkey the turkeys have finally wised up to Thanksgiving and have made themselves scarce.  The townspeople want a plump turkey for their dinner so they try to trick a turkey into returning to town to model for, and then judge, a turkey art contest.  The people make turkeys out of all sorts of materials- soap, oatmeal, rope and more.  Will their plan work or will the turkeys outsmart them once again?

Eva loved seeing the turkeys made of so many different things so I asked her what she would make her turkey out of.  She chose ribbon so we cut strips of various ribbon I had around.  We also used two brown paper circles, some orange scraps and googly eyes.  To start, I put a dab of glue on the end of each ribbon and Eva formed a loop.  (It turned out that white glue only held non-silky ribbon together so I ended up using glue dots on the rest.)

(Don't mind the Halloween jammies- we are celebrating my birthday today with a jammie day and Eva wanted to wear footed ones.)
Then Eva put her turkey together tucking the ribbons under the body.

To finish the picture I wrote "T is for turkey" along the bottom.  I also added a dot under each word so that Eva could point and read it.

What would you make your turkey out of?

Turkey Handprint Cards

This is the Thanksgiving card that Eva made for her friends and family members.  We made a dozen and Eva was a trooper letting me paint and repaint her hand and then signing her name on each.  We hope everyone likes them!

Hide 'n Seek Turkeys

Can you find the turkey?

After reading Hide and Seek Turkeys by Judith Ross Enderle,

I wrote the words for numbers 1-5 on little turkey cut outs and hid them around the living room for Eva to find.  She has been asking to "investigate" things lately so we used investigative skills to determine where the turkeys may be hiding.  Here she is getting pretty close.

And she found it!

I have a feeling we will be playing this game a lot between now and Thanksgiving!