Milk Carton Turkeys!

We made Milk Carton Turkeys last year with our 5th grade buddies. I was teaching kindergarten then, so my little ones needed quite a bit of help. I absolutely love how they turned out because I didn't provide patterns, so each turkey was different:  :)

 

I'm not sure where I first got the idea (this was back before Pinterest!) but these require very little prep work so if you're looking for a last-minute idea this would be great! 

Prep Work:

The first thing to do is have everyone save their milk cartons - either in the morning if you have breakfast at school, or from lunch the day before. It doesn't matter whether it's chocolate or white milk as it will get completely covered :) Open the cartons completely, dump any remaining milk and rinse well. Put some paper towel down on the counter and let them drip dry. Cut strips of brown paper to match to height and width of your milk cartons. This is really the hardest part for the teacher :) Just wrap the paper around one of the cartons and mark the proper size to cut the papers to.

Assembly:
Glue the brown paper around the milk cartons - a hot glue gun wielded by the teacher would hasten this process! We just used white glue and our "patient muscles" and held the paper in place until it dried. This gave the 5th graders a lot of time to talk with their new kinder friends! Make sure the opening of the carton is facing up!

Have your students trace their hands on 4-5 different colors of construction paper. This was where the 5th graders came in handy! (sorry for the bad pun!) If you're doing this without older students helping, just have your students pair up to help each other :) Cut out the hands and glue them to the "back" of the milk carton - generally wherever the brown paper seam is, but as you can see from my picture we didn't all follow that guidance!  Make sure the hands are fanned out so that they resemble a turkey's tail feathers.

Draw and cut out a turkey head using brown paper. This was where the 5th graders' creativity really shined. I drew a turkey head on our white board and told them to "wing it" (ugh, another bad pun!) As you can see, some decided to draw a side view of the turkey head while others went with a frontal view.


Using orange construction paper, make a beak for the turkey. If their turkey is facing forward, they can cut out a rhombus and fold it in half to have an open beak. For a side view turkey they just cut out a triangle. The wattle is made from either red or orange construction paper, and I just had the kids free-draw that as well - it's just  a squiggly shape.

Glue it all together and write "My Thankful Box" on the front of the turkey. Give each child 4 small strips of paper on which to write or illustrate things they are thankful for. These can be stored inside the milk carton and taken out to read on Thanksgiving!