What does the Mayflower bring? Placecards, Pilgrim

When I saw these mayflower place card holders at 4CrazyKings I knew they would be a perfect craft for us.  Luke even got in on the crafting. (and it's a good thing or our masts would be terribly tilted.)

I forgot to pick up coffee stirrers so we used bamboo skewers I had on hand. Oh and I just ran in and asked Starbucks for a stack of sleeves and they were super happy to hand some over.  We were also impatient with gluing (but hot glue would have worked nicely) so we used a tape/stapler combo.  The nice thing about skewers is they poked right through the masts and no adhesive was needed for that part.

Thanks for sharing your ideas MamaKing!

A Couple of Turkeys

It is that time of year again, turkey time.  It is rather interesting we make all these turkey crafts, then eat the bird, but that might be should be another post, on a different blog.  

This year the boys had a more free-form challenge, I gave them a few supplies and they went to work.  They each came up with something quite different, but both turkeys. After a few years of turkey making I quite frankly am out of ideas, so here are the details on theirs...

E's bird is a hand-shaped die cut but you could easily trace your child's own. He taped different coloured feathers to the fingers, glued on a googly eye and beak and twisted on a wattle (that red flap under the beak, yes I had to look up the word for this).

C used a clothes pin for his body, which turned out great because it could stand up! Taped on some feathers, then wrapped the body in pipe cleaners to hide the tape I think and "make the turkey fatter".  He glued on some googly eyes and a beak.

I thought these designs were better than anything I could come up with and would make great guided craft for kids as well.  Maybe we'll make our own flock...

Build your Own Pilgrim Settlement

In the tradition of last year's pilgrim settlement we once again got out the Lincoln Logs and built some settler homes.

I have also dicovered a new favourite thanksgiving book, it tells the real story of the Mayflower, the Settlers and their Native American friends. It has interesting details and explains the different groups of people on the boat, why they were leaving England and what life on the boat was like and some of the perils of the new land. It keep my 5year olds' interest, and has been the subject of several conversations over the week.
The Thanksgiving Story by Alice Dalgliesh, illustrated by Helen Sewell ( I loved the illustrations and it included great diagrams of the boat and maps of the new land)

Much Thanks

Beautiful and tasty pies,
Great people.
Plus many, many things to be Thankful for.
Thank you Deanie, Mark and Conley for the lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

chur-key hands

It makes a village

I had never thought of Lincoln Logs as holiday decor until this year. You can build an amazing pilgrim settlement. The teepees are simply decorated with felt pens and twisted - giant recipe cards, with short bamboo skewers holding them up. E came up with the circle of logs near the teepee village. The foam pilgrims and turkeys are $1 crafts from JoAnn's fabrics and my darling Dad made me the wooden turkey many years ago. The boys have had a bit of fun playing with this set-up over the past week, including speeding a race car through the settlement and scattering turkeys everywhere. "Pray pardon me!" was all the pilgrims could say about it.

Dead Chur-keys

So we all know there is a morbid side to Thanksgiving...the sacrifice of the Turkey for the table centerpiece. Don't get me wrong as a former vegetarian, now aspiring to be omnivore, I still have never sided with tofurkey, just avoided the meat, and thought, "to each his own, if you like eating birds go for it, I'll pass the cranberry sauce".

This year may be different, I think my 4-year-olds may drive me back to my veggie ways. Them and the frozen body in our freezer that I dread unwrapping. I should add that for some reason the word turkey is a little complicated for my 4 year olds. It comes out more like Chur-key, just so you can have the full effect of the holiday preparations around here. By prep I mean stories of Pilgrims and Indians, a gallery of thanksgiving colouring pages taped on the downstairs wall, leaf collecting and talking about roasting turkeys, baking pies and visiting our turkey in the freezer a couple times a day, yes that's right, you read it correctly.

No, this was not my idea, Luke actually introduced them the day after the frozen lump was brought home from the grocery store. E is a little obsessed, he talks about Churkeys constantly. He has been drawing turkeys all day, just a round body and legs, he asks can we look at the frozen churkey? After many requests I agree. Then he starts drawing round lumps, "this is the frozen churkey, Mom"

It's a little disturbing, I don't think I can eat any turkey after these conversations.

He wanted me to write on one of the pictures "Keep the dead turkeys outside" then he taped it to the door.

Some of the headless turkey pictures also include wavy lines coming out of them. "this is the churkey getting roasted, Mom" "the dead churkey, before it gets eaten." Did I mention he laughs about it like it is the funniest joke - not really that funny if you are a churkey.