Stuffed Paper Bag Turkey Craft

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by Alyssa

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and we are starting to get ready by decorating our house with fun (and easy) crafts found across the internet. My daughter has made hand-turkeys, a horn-of-plenty, and painted pictures this year we are going to try something a little different.

I came across this cute idea for a Thanksgiving themed craft; you can make them before the actual event or use them as a Thanksgiving craft to keep little ones busy after dinner! What’s fun about crafts like these is you don't have to use exactly what’s needed for supplies. We substituted a few ideas of our own from the original on Kaboose.

Stuffed Paper Bag Turkey: Supplies -

  • Brown paper lunch bags
  • Paint, Markers or crayons (for decorating)
  • Felt pieces (orange, brown, green, and red) or coloured paper (we used paper for this one)
  • 2 medium wiggle eyes (we didn’t have access to eyes so we just drew them on!)
  • White or stick glue
  • Scissors (parents, this is where we come in!)
  • 1 Spoon and brown cardboard

How to make one:

  1. Lay out brown paper bag on a flat surface. Using the paint, markers or crayons to add colour at the opening of the bag. About 5 to 6" long (this will be the turkey's tail feathers)
  2. Open up the bag; make sure to make stripes all the way around including the sides!
  3. Carefully cut the stripes with scissors. You can colour the other sides of the strips but this is optional. We left ours brown and gave it a little colour :)
  4. Fill the bag up half way with crumpled up newspaper.
  5. Gather the bag together just under the strips and fasten with elastic band. Make sure to fix the strips the way you like them, pinching just under the elastic you can bring them forward and arrange them, these are the turkeys feathers.
  6. If you decide to use paper instead of draw the features on you’ll need to cut the following from felt or paper - orange triangle (beak), red heart (gobbler),brown triangles (feet) and green bowtie.
  7. For the head: Place the spoon face down on the cardboard, trace it and cut it out. Make sure to make the neck long enough to insert into the body. This will be your turkeys head. Glue or draw on eyes, beak and gobbler.
  8. Placing the stuffed bag on its side ruffles up, cut a small hole at the end of the bag where the neck and head should be.
  9. Push the neck of the cardboard head into the hole and add some glue to seal it.
  10. Cut some toes out from the two brown triangles, dab some glue and set the turkey on them so the feet will stick to the bottom. (our turkey stood on his own so we just drew the feet on)
  11. (Optional) Cut out your bowtie and glue it on the front as well.

For extra fun you can try adding a "happy thanksgiving" sign and gluing it on the front of the turkey under the bowtie. You can really use your imagination when it comes to craft and this one is great for it too, we substituted some of the original supplies with what we had around the house and you can do the same too!

These are fairly simple and make a cute center-piece your child can be proud he or she made this thanksgiving! Happy crafting!

Alyssa is an almost-30, stay-at-home mom of two wonderful kids aged 2 (boy) and 6 (girl), together with her husband Patrick. She spends her days taking care of her family, home and everything in between while posting on her blog A Motherhood Experience by night.