Turkey Lurky

Sarah brought home a picture of a turkey last Friday with instructions from her teacher that she was to decorate it with anything we had around our house and bring it back to school on Monday. Sunday afternoon, I went out to do some shopping by myself, and before I left, I settled my little artist in at the writing table. With watercolor paints, dishes of pom poms, bows, googely eyes, glitter glue, 3d paint, and all kinds of other craft supplies, I left her to her own devices. She’s very into creative expression right now, in how she uses paper and art supplies, builds things, and espeically in how she dresses herself.

When I came back from my shopping excursion, I was excited to see what she had created in my absence. Somewhat like I expected, the turkey was painted with watercolors. She had glued a google eye onto the dot on the turkey’s head with glitter glue. She used the bows and a few pom poms to decorate some of the turkey feathers. What surprised me, though was that she had gone through the miscelleansous papers on the writing table and found a school picture of one of our favorite friends from North Dakota and glued it onto a square of fancy paper, and then glued that onto the turkey. Next to the picture she used the word wall in our office to write “my best friend.” Not exactly what most kindergarteners would use to decorate a turkey! But it’s so . . . her. She’s just not really afraid to try something unusual right now, and it would make perfect sense in her head that to make a turkey beautiful you’d paste upon it a picture of one of your most beautiful friendships, because friends are important right now to her too.