Thanksgiving Craft: Turkey Nut Holder Centerpiece

This is an easy Thanksgiving craft that is fun for the entire family to make. The craft is a turkey nut holder that uses handprint cut outs as the feathers. You can let everyone in the family make cut outs of their hands so the proud turkey can show off a full array of wonderful tail feathers.

You can see an image of this turkey nut holder if you click here. You will see that the turkey is holding nuts in the shell. But, you could also fill the bag with shelled nuts that are easy to just grab and eat. You can also let the turkey hold other dry goodies like candy, cookies or pretzels. You can line the paper bag with a plastic bag so you don't dirty the turkey with crumbs.

To make the turkey nut holder, start by rolling down the edges of a paper bag as seen in the photo. If you don't have a paper bag, or if you want a more sturdy turkey nut holder, you can use a brown basket or even a small cardboard box.

Have the entire family trace around their hands on different colors of construction paper. Then cut out all the hands. The more hands you have, the fuller the tail feathers will be. Glue the hands to the back of the paper bag.

Using the image as a guide, cut out a turkey head, a pilgrim hat and two wings. Glue them to the bag, positioning them as seen in the photo. Embellish by adding a beak and eyes. Make a wattle using a red pipe cleaner. You could also just cut a wattle from red construction paper.

Fill your turkey nut holder with nuts or whatever you like. Place it on your Thanksgiving dinner table or buffet to add a nice touch to your holiday meal.

Let your kids make turkey treat holders in all shapes and sizes. They can use small jars like baby food jars as the body and glue little feathers on the back and a small turkey head on the front. They can also use plastic containers like empty whipped topping containers and decorate those. They can paint the containers brown using craft paints, then line the containers with a plastic bag.

Another fun twist to this craft is to bake cupcakes using the paper cup cake liners, then attaching tail feathers and the turkey head using scotch tape. Alternately, for the head, you could glue a turkey head and pilgrim hat to half a popsicle stick and stick that in one side of the cupcake. Then you can glue an array of tail feathers to a full length popsicle stick and poke that one into the other side of the cupcake. You can have turkey cupcakes on platters on your dessert table for Thanksgiving dinner. The cupcakes also make a nice food to bring to a school or office party.