Did You Ever See a Turkey? Puppets

Sarah shared this amazing Thanksgiving song on Flannel Friday the week before last, and I thought it was an absolute stroke of genius. She did hers as a flannel board, and designed super-cute feathers for her adorable turkey. I loved her idea of changing the feathers so much, that I adapted the concept and made my own Popsicle stick puppets.

Here's my process.

I needed a turkey that didn't already have feathers, so I chose this one from my new favorite clipart website, Clker.com. I didn't have time to get fancy, since this was a last-minute addition to my Thanksgiving story time plans, so I just cut out the turkey and taped him to a Popsicle stick. (I normally would have laminated him with Contact paper and stuck some Velcro to his back, but I am out of both of those things right now!)

Once I had my turkey, I needed a simple pattern to use for tracing my feathers. I started going through the list of what I already had that would work and realized I had just the thing - ties! I borrowed one of Daddy's Ties from my Father's Day flannel board, and traced it, leaving out the knot at the top. Then I turned it upside down, and voila! A turkey feather. I made three sets, using construction paper, and other patterned paper I had sitting around in a closet.

My sets of feathers are on three separate Popsicle sticks, which look like this:

The feathers are stapled together, then taped to the back of the Popsicle sticks. (I made sure they lined up correctly with the turkey stick puppet before setting down the tape.)

When we sang the song at story time, here's how it went. (Italicized parts are my banter with the audience. I find spontaneous commentary between songs or verses to be very difficult sometimes, so I thought I'd share it in case it helps anyone else!)

Did you ever see a turkey, a turkey, a turkey?

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this?
With brown ones, and pink ones, and green ones, and purple ones.

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this?

You might have seen a turkey with colorful feathers, but I bet you never saw a turkey that looked like this! Let's see what we have here. This one looks like an elephant. This one's like a tiger. And here's one that looks like a zebra. And this one looks like a parrot. Wow!

Did you ever see a turkey, a turkey, a turkey?

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this?
Like an elephant, like a tiger, like a zebra, like a parrot.

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this? 

I definitely never saw a turkey that looked like that. But what about this? Whoa, fancy feathers! Look at these. This one has fireworks, this one has bugs, or insects, this one is tie-dyed, and this one has sunflowers. Let's sing about this very silly turkey!

 Did you ever see a turkey, a turkey, a turkey?

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this?
Like fireworks, and insects, and tie-dye, and sunflowers.

Did you ever see a turkey with feathers like this? 

Great job! Let's all say goodbye to our turkey. Bye, turkey!

I am already trying to come up with other flying creatures whose wings could use a makeover. This was one of the most fun songs I've done at story time this whole year, and the kids absolutely loved it. 

Now I am officially done with Thanksgiving-related story time posts! On to Christmas! (Well, after I take my five-day Thanksgiving vacation...)

ETA: Apparently, Google had the same idea! http://g.co/doodle/q5wz5s