Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  But let's not forget about one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving: a day that's wonderful not only because of the delicious meal with which we celebrate it, but also for the reminder to think about the many things for which we are grateful.  I have a lot to be thankful for this year: my one year old puppy, Oliver, my family, my health, and a job that is so incredibly rewarding and fulfilling!  Not many people can say that they have a job that they look forward to going to every day.  Every day except for Monday, that is, but that's just because I sleep like a perpetual teenager.  Once I've had my coffee I am always happy to be back at work again, because I get to do fun stuff like the following.

Every Wednesday our library holds a program called "Wacky Wednesday"- a program intended for school-aged children (6-12), where kids can come to the library after school for a fun activity.  For the night before Thanksgiving, I decided of course to have a turkey related program.

First, I read Turkey Trouble by Wendy Silvano. The kids were really engaged with the story, which was especially great given the wide range of ages: I ended up having children as young as three and as old as eight attend the program.  I have a flannel that I created for the story.  The book adapts well for the flannel format as the turkey keeps on trying to outsmart the farmer by dressing up as different farm animals so he doesn't end up being Thanksgiving dinner!  I like to use a flannel whenever possible to add that extra visual engagement with a story.

Next, we did a Turkey Book craft borrowed from B-Inspired Mama.  I pre-made little books for the kids by folding a paper bag in half, hole punching two holes along the fold, and affixing a rubber band around a popsicle stick to create the book's spine.  Initially, I created a model craft very much like the example from the aforementioned blog post, but instead used AcccCut maple leaves for the turkey's feathers.

However, with a busy week before Thanksgiving, I ran out of time to pre-cut the features of the turkey's face.  To make my life easier, I just used AccuCut turkeys for the kids to decorate and paste onto their books.  I ended up not making an example to show them, which I think helps encourage kids' creativity because they are then not preoccupied with making their craft look just like the example.  I also wrote "I'm Thankful For..." along each spine to encourage kids to think about the true meaning of Thanksgiving and decorate their books with things they are thankful for.  I melted a little bit (actually, a lot) when a little cutie drew herself and me and told me, "I'm thankful for you, Miss Cassie."  Then she drew her mom and dad on the next page.  Sweetness overload!

I really liked this craft and plan on using it again in the future- you could use countless themes by having kids create a book about really anything, and the preparation ended up being a lot easier than I thought, once I decided to calm down and not be so type-A about having everything perfect.  I need to remind myself of this often, I think that a lot of librarians have the tendencies to be perfectionists, but when it comes to kids crafting, letting them do their own thing ends up being much better for all of us.

Thanks for reading and hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!