Arts and Crafts for Kids- Potato Masher Painted Turkey

Kitchen tools can make great painting tools for arts and crafts for kids. We create this turkey craft using a potato masher. The masher added a lot of texture to the turkey. It was lots of fun to make. I think you will like creating a mashed turkey for Thanksgiving too. I have titled this preschool activities, but I think older children will enjoy it too.

Arts and Crafts for Kids- Potato Masher Turkey

The trickiest part of doing this arts and crafts for kids project is that after you paint with each color you have to clean the potato. If you have more than one masher per child or per color, it will make it a whole lot less tricky. For the rest of this post let’s assume you have more than one masher.

There are several ways that you can apply the paint to the potato masher. If you want to eliminate a lot of paint dripping, you can paint the paint onto the potato masher with a paint brush. If you want to complete the craft a little bit faster, you can have children dip the potato masher into a tray of paint. (A tray will be much easier to dip the paint into or onto than a bowl would be.)

This arts and crafts for kids project can be created in a center by one child at a time or in a group setting. The group could move around a table that has stations with specific color and a masher in them. The members of group could also pass the trays and mashers. I think it would be easier for the children to move.

We started by painting the feathers first and then the body. By doing the painting that way we ended up some of the color from the feathers showing through the potato masher painted holes in the head. If you don’t like that look, you can have your children pain the head first.

Painting the beak and waddle onto this Thanksgiving craft head didn’t work for us. The tempera paint we tried just didn’t show up. We ended up cutting a beak and waddle out of construction paper. Then we glued them on. You may want to explore beak and waddle painting with the paints you have available to you. They may show up well on the turkey’s head. ( Sometimes arts and crafts for kids require experimenting.)

When it has dried, I think this would be a wonderful Thanksgiving place mat (If you use it as a place mat, you may want to laminate it.) It could also be used as a wall display or door decoration. Your Thanksgiving guests will probably enjoy getting to see this arts and crafts for kids Turkey.