It is tough to come up with Thanksgiving crafts except for the “pine cone turkey.” So, I was excited when Oriental Trader had a craft that would work with my pre-school class.

(For those not familiar with crafts and preschoolers, basically you have to work off the “don’t want to do this” again list. For me this includes anything involving: scissors, glue, paint, tape, dried pasta, beans or fruit. In other words, I’m not good with crafts and little kids!)

The ordered kits arrived in the mail and I was ready to make a sample. The craft involved pealing brightly colored turkey part stickers (like feathers, beak, eyes, body, etc.) off of a page and placing them on another page. The final result was a cute turkey in the middle of a piece of paper. What could go wrong? The only problem was that the parts had to be put on the paper in a certain order or the turkey didn’t look like the one on the front of the package.

The appointed Thanksgiving craft day arrived and only two kids (twins) showed up for class. I hated it that more kids didn’t come, but this was going to be easy. The three of us started working. I reminded the kids of the importance of doing the project in order. They looked at me and followed my instructions. After about 10 minutes of work, their turkeys looked like mine. I was so pleased.

Because I had planned for more kids, I told the twins that they could do additional turkey pages if they wanted to. They looked at each other and then one looked at me and asked “can we put the stickers on the page anyway we want to?” I was surprised. I knew that that would not work. I had found that unless they followed my specific directions their turkeys would look strange.

I looked back at the boys. They were smiling with expectation. They had the look of a child – the look that the rest of us are trying to restore on our own faces. I smiled back and said “Sure.”

And, that’s when the fun started. Feathers got eyes. Beaks were on top of the paper. Several pages had no turkey body and another page had multiple turkey bodies with no heads. The boys laughed and laughed as their turkey pictures got crazier. Finally they laughed so hard that one of them snorted and that resulted in even more laughter.   I laughed so hard that tears rolled down my cheeks.

OK, so our turkey pictures looked nothing like the picture on the package. But, we had a ball.

This year, as we gather together, give perfection a rest and pray that you and yours will laugh together until there are tears and snorting!!

“Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns.” (Deuteronomy 16:14)