DIY: Turkey From A Cascade Container

I love the book "Turkey Trouble", by Wendy Silvano.  It's a fun book where the turkey wears different disguises of the other animals on the farm.  The turkey saves it's life by bringing the family pizza and disguising itself as the pizza delivery person.  The family eats pizza instead of turkey for Thanksgiving.

I wanted to make a turkey to use with my kids.  I wanted to make a turkey that could actually "eat" the pizza.  Since I love using Cascade dish detergent containers, I new that would become our turkey!

This turkey is very easy to make.  I start out with a Cascade container.  Make sure to wash it out, because it has a very strong smell!

I cover my containers with foam.  You can use construction paper, but over the years I've found that foam is much more durable.  It is really able to stand up to the "love" of small children.  Another tip-  Kids will pull off parts of your animals, but foam is very easy to hot glue back on :)

Step 1- Cover the turkey's body with dark brown foam.  I wrap the foam around the bottom of the container.  Use two pieces of foam for the top.  This will allow the turkey's mouth to open.

Step 2- Cut out a beak from yellow foam.  Attach the beak to the front of the container. 

Make sure that you do not attach behind the crease.  The turkey needs to be able to open his mouth.

Step 3- Cut out feathers is multiple colors and hot glue them to the back of the turkey.  I fanned them out and was liberal with the hot glue. 

 

Step 4- Create eyes for the turkey.  I cut two large circles out of white foam and two small circles out of black foam.  I hot glued the eyes to the top of the turkey, behind the crease.

You made a turkey!  You can use this turkey for tons of activities.

We have used it with:

- Counting activities: Use tongs, spoons, spatulas and feed the turkey different amounts of "food"

- Letter identification and beginning sounds: We used the fun food cards from my Thanksgiving Dinner "Roll, Say, Keep" pack.  Each child got a few letter cards and placed them in front of them.  I would say a letter or letter sound, I differentiated by ability.  The child with the matching letter would feed the letter to the turkey. 

- Sorting food by taste:  We also used a lot of language, by talking about the different types of food.  We talked about the tastes of salty, sweet, sour, bitter.  Students were able to sort food, by type, and feed to the turkey.

- Rhyming:  The turkey can only eat rhyming words.  Find the matches and feed to the turkey.

- Spelling words: Spell and feed.

The list can go on and on.  You can practice any skill with this manipulative.  Adding the turkey, brings novelty to skill practice.  Kids tend to love anything new and fun!  Take advantage of this :)

One more idea for your turkey!  Read the fun book "Turkey Trouble".  Since the turkey ends up eating pizza, you can create your own pizzas to feed to the turkey.  Great fine motor practice and the kids make the manipulatives to use with the turkey.

We started out cutting out circles of tan foam.  If you want to create lasting manipulatives, use foam.  If you just want kids to make these to take home, use construction paper. 

 Cut out red blobs for the sauce, yellow snips for cheese, white snips for onions, green snips for green pepper, ands dark brown circles for pepperoni.  Each child was able to design their own pizza.

We used spatulas to "feed the turkey"!  The kids loved it and it helped with counting and fine motor!

I hope you have fun creating your own turkey!

 

My computer has been crashing for the last month, so stay tuned for a ton of DIY manipulatives!  I have been creating with my glue gun, instead of the computer!!
Find some more DIY math manipulatives here!!  I have a collection of some of my favorites.