Turkey Day! (and tiny marshmallow dumbells)

I was going to call this post “Edible Turkey Day,” until I thought about it and realized…Duh. Turkeys are already edible.

Every year, my school holds two holiday luncheons. One is for Christmas and the other is for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving this year, the kids in odd numbered grades (1,3,5) have to make decorations and they can invite their parents to come have lunch with them. For Christmas, we’ll switch. Usually, I end up doing wall decorations – this is easy! They can make a wreath or color something. But this year, I ended up with table decorations. I wanted something 3-D that the kids could take home with them and put on their own table, so I decided to have the kids make the same turkey I used to make when I was in school. Apparently, only a couple of them had ever done it before! So I went off to Wal-Mart and bought apples, marshmallows, toothpicks, paper plates, and gumdrops.

First, the kids colored some leaves and cut them out. They glued them to cover the bottom of a plate. Then they took an apple and made it into a turkey. Super simple, but Kids. Love. Marshmallows. In the middle of the toothpick-marshmallow madness, from the other end of the room, I heard one of the kids grunting, as in ‘lifting a heavy box’ grunting, or ‘struggling to change a tire’ grunting. Glancing over, I saw Abraham (name changed) straining and groaning to lift…

his tiny toothpick-marshmallow dumbell. Lord. Maybe it’s the long hours, but I started to giggle. And once I started I couldn’t stop! I think I laughed about that little dumbell for about twenty minutes. Not normal.

So anyway, this is how the turkeys turned out.

 The kids were super excited and I think I answered the question, “Can we eat it?” about fifty times. I also averted two turkey mohawk disasters and caught one little guy licking, “But I’m not eating it!” a marshmallow. (I think my favorite part is the little feet we had to add on so they would balance upright. They look like they’re wearing little turkey shoes! 🙂

Also, guess what?! The 5Ws cube I uploaded the other day wasn’t quite square on each side! I tried it out myself today and was a little disappointed with the dimensions. I uploaded the new and improved file and everything should be better now. In case you’d like it, here it is.