McGee - Paper Crafts for Thanksgiving

A TIME TO GIVE THANKS
AND TO CREATE!

Do you want to make your own turkey pop-up card? Turkeys are very important to Thanksgiving. Follow storyteller Randel McGee as he explores Thanksgiving in Paper Crafts for Thanksgiving. Learn to make Pilgrim paper dolls, American Indian paper dolls, a turkey stencil, a corn and gourd paper chain, and more!

Thanksgiving is an American tradition when friends and family gather. Learn more about the origins and meaning of Thanksgiving as you make paper crafts to decorate your table and share with family and friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Randel McGee is a storyteller, puppeteer, ventriloquist, and paper-cutting artist. He performs all over the world, sharing his paper-cutting stories with children and adults.

Thanksgiving Day in the United States is a special holiday. On the fourth Thursday of November, family, relatives, and friends gather together to feast in celebration of the things they are thankful for throughout the year. Most families have their own favorite foods on the menu, but some common Thanksgiving foods are roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. What is the story behind our Thanksgiving holiday?

The first Thanksgiving feast was celebrated in 1621 by the English settlers of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The settlers were a religious group called Separatists or Pilgrims. A pilgrim is someone who travels far for religious reasons. In 1620, the Pilgrims left Europe for America to find a place to practice their religion freely. They crossed the ocean and arrived at Plymouth in a ship called the Mayflower.

In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims feasted for three days with their American Indian friends. The Wampanoag (pronounced wamp-a-NO-ag) and other tribes had helped them plant crops, fish, and hunt for food.They may have had some wild turkey to eat, but they also would have had venison (deer meat), ducks, geese, lobsters, oysters, fish, beans, carrots, squash, and corn pudding. They did not celebrate a day of Thanksgiving at the same time every year after that.

It was over two hundred years after the Pilgrims first feast that a woman named Sarah Hale thought that there should be a national day of Thanksgiving. She wrote letters to friends and leaders around the country asking to make a national Thanksgiving holiday on the last Thursday of November. She wrote thousands of letters over seventeen years. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln finally accepted Mrs. Hales proposal and declared the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially signed into law a resolution proposed by Congress that changed the date to the fourth Thursday of November.

Americans still remember the Pilgrims and American Indian friends on Thanksgiving Day, but we have added other traditions to this holiday, such as parades and sporting events. However, it is especially a time to give thanks for those people, comforts, and foods that we have that make our lives happy, safe, and healthy.

AUTHOR"S NOTE: Many of the materials used in making these crafts may be found by using recycled paper products. The author uses such recycled items as cereal boxes and similar packaging for light cardboard, manila folders for card stock paper, leftover pieces of wrapping paper, and so forth. This not only reduces the cost of the projects but is also a great way to reuse and recycle paper. Be sure to ask an adult for permission before using any recycled paper products.

The projects in this book were created for this particular holiday. However, I invite readers to be imaginative and find new ways to use the ideas in this book to create different projects of their own. Please feel free to share pictures of your work with me through www.mcgeeproductions.com . Happy Crafting!

The turkey has become a symbol of Thanksgiving. Wild turkey may have been one of the many foods eaten during the first Thanksgiving. Roast turkey is still popular for Thanksgiving meals today. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, wanted the turkey to be the national bird instead of the bald eagle. Make this turkey pop-up card to send to a friend or to use as a decoration.

Fold a sheet of white card stock in half lengthwise. Fold a sheet of construction paper in half width-wise, like a book.

Use tracing paper to transfer the turkey patterns from to the folded card stock and cut out the patterns.

Take the turkey head pattern and fold back and forth on the dotted lines. Spread the turkey head pattern out flat. Gently push up on the fold lines and pinch the creases to make the beak stand out.

Open all the folded pattern pieces and color them as you wish.

On the uncolored side of each pattern piece, glue small strips of craft foam near two outside edges of the piece. Let dry.

Line up the crease in the tail pattern with the crease in the construction paper and glue it in place on the craft foam strip. Stack the pieces of the turkey pattern on top of each other with a drop of white glue on the craft foam strips. Let dry.

Glue a small piece of red tissue paper to the beak for the turkeys wattle.

Write a Thanksgiving greeting on the outside and inside of the card.

We often see pictures of the Pilgrims wearing black clothes and tall hats. The Pilgrims did wear black clothes for church meetings, but on most days they wore garments of light brown, red, blue, green, and even purple. Boys wore breeches (pants that came to below the knee), shirts, doublets (jacket-like vests), and hats or stocking caps. Girls wore petticoats under ankle-length skirts, blouses, aprons, and caps or bonnets.