Short Bread Jumpin' Jive Turkey!

This Idea Came From: Gramma Mer Mer is in town for Thanksgiving and Emma has been waiting all week to make the Nick Jr. Turkey Hand Cookies.http://www.nickjr.com/recipes/hand-turkey-frosted-cookies.jhtml

Our Experience: Okay my sweet and persistent child... Today is the day we make the Hand Turkey Cookies! I grabbed a piece of paper and traced Emma's hands and we cut them out- this was to be our template. The Kitchen Aid was put to use today! Emma can toss in each ingredient and count how many cups or teaspoons we dump in... This is exciting stuff for her! Mixed dough- flattened and traced hand template with a skewer. Sidebar:We have a love for Short Bread Cookies in this house... except for me. I am happy to have them around because I will not be tempted in the least to sneak them.  Everybody is a winner with Shortbread cookies- Emma gets to do her craft, daddy get a jar full of his favorites, Gramma loves them too.. and I do not get sabotaged. I used the Argo recipe on the back of a box I cut out a long time ago.. and it seems to be a huge hit. http://www.argostarch.com/recipe_details.asp?id=1261 I found the recipe online. So- Shortbread is a little difficult for little hands to work with- but we made it through fine. She had to be very gentle and patience. Next: I was prepared to mix all of my own frostings but... nahhhh. I bought a little pint of white butter cream and 4 tubes of colored frostings to apply to the top of the cookies.  I chose Red, Yellow, Blue.. and Black... Who wants to make Black frosting, ever?  Not me... so I figured with the primaries and the black we would be covered from Thanksgiving to Next Valentines Day for Cook Frosting. We made a pallet of colors on a plate and used wood skewers to paint the icing onto the cookie. Maybe we will try another way next time... not as vibrant as I had hoped.. but good for eating. It was a cute little project to squeeze in between Thanksgiving cooking.

The Lesson: Kids need to part of the kitchen too when the holidays come around.  They feel left out or in the way... The best thing to do is put them to work doing an easy part of prep work.. or create a diversion altogether... Turkey Cookies! Happy Thanksgiving all.

The Great Anti-Toddler Gobbler

This Idea Came From: Today we have a friend over for a play date. Two against one, I was pressed to find something they would agree on. CRAFT!!!! I looked up online for cute turkey ideas.. but that were a little different. This table decoration gave me a great idea. http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/turkey-table-topper-669418/

Our Experience: Because I was pulling this from thin air... I scrambled to get things going fast.  I grabbed two large sheets of white paper and also found a turkey head online  http://crafts.kaboose.com/pumpkin-turkey.html and printed a few of them to get the girls started whilst I gathered the STUFF. Stickers, glue, feathers, sprinkles, buttons, beads, crayola, markers, scissors, eyeballs, popcycle sticks... and anything else I could grab. I am a collector of paint swatches at the hardware stores... to cut up and use in our crafty times. The colors are vibrant and not a mess maker. I drew the outlined suggestion of feathers and told the girls to  decorate each one; one with stickers, one with glued paper, one with feathers, one with marker.. and so on. They cut out the feathers with a little help- then glued them to a sheet of construction paper for stability. Then the front and back of the turkey head with a popcycle stick stacked in between. Pressed them gently and put them on the heat register on the floor for fast drying time (one flip to get both sides). I made one too... out of the leftover back grounds of sticker garbage. Kind of a good argument for saving those types of things.. as they make nice patterns.

The Lesson: This craft was perfect for almost 4 year olds... it brought them together and focused on one thing instead of zipping from room to room not agreeing on a thing! Crafts save the world!

Posted by Sookie at 10:45 AM