Thankful Hands! - Thanksgiving Bulletin Board

Thankful Hands Thanksgiving Turkey Bulletin Board

Need a last minute Thanksgiving display idea? You can't go wrong with a turkey and colorful hand print 'feathers' created by your kiddos! This particular bulletin board design was submitted to us by a local daycare and we thought it would be wonderful to share their hard work!

Sample Thanksgiving Turkey Writing Craft

Thankful Turkey Writing Craftivity

Simple enough to complete, we think these colorful turkey crafts offer an opportunity for your students to connect with the meaning of the holiday on a more personal level!

Our approach...

  • Download a simple turkey template/coloring page from Teachers.net.
  • Invite students to color the turkey.
  • Provide students with a simple printable booklet to cut out and paste onto the belly of their colored turkey.
  • Have students fill in the booklet pages - text and illustrations - with the things they are most grateful for this year!

Here's a look at the inside of the booklet...

Inside View of Sample Thanksgiving Turkey Writing Craft

[NOTE: To go along with the "Thankful Hands" theme, you might also consider keeping the turkey body/booklet, but having students create the turkey feathers with construction paper hand print cutouts!]

Thankful Hands!

  • Background: Yellow bulletin board paper.
  • Title: "Thankful Hands!"
  • Border: Thanksgiving themed trimmer or complimentary colored/patterened bulletin board border.
  • Decoration: 1) The Turkey Body. Cut a medium-size circle from brown bulletin board paper to create the turkey's 'body'. Use the same paper or a piece of brown construction paper to create the head and neck of the turkey, cutting a shape similar to a slim, filled in number "8" or a skinny bowling pin. Add construction paper details to the head/body creating eyes, a beak, the wattle, and legs. Finally, you're ready for the feathers! 2) The Turkey Feathers. Cut long, thin strips of white or natural butcher paper. [NOTE: You'll need the strips as wide as a child sized hand print.] Set out each strip with a shallow dish of paint (making sure each dish contains a different color) and invite your students to work together to fill each strip with paint hand prints, fitting the prints vertically end to end until the strip is fully covered. Once dry, use scissors to trim the top of each strip to look like a feather. Depending on how big your turkey cutout is, it's likely you'll need to create more than one feather of each color in order to fully decorate the cutout. 3) The Thankful Hands Craft. It looks like the original design featured simple construction paper hand print turkeys - i.e. students were invited to trace and cut their hand print from brown construction paper, used markers to turn their fingers into feathers, and then added a construction paper beak and wiggle eyes to complete the face. There are, of course, numerous ways to do the craft! For older students, we suggest pairing the craft with a writing activity like the one described above!