Play Dough Turkeys

Play dough turkeys are the perfect activity for preschoolers! Or really, for anyone who is old enough to not put things in their mouth. After creating our paper bag turkey puppets, we had a LOT of feathers left over. I decided to set out the feathers along with play dough, googly eyes, and craft foam turkey beaks so that Owen and Jonathan could make play dough turkeys.

Note: This post was originally published in November 2013. I updated it in November 2021, but kept some of the cute photos of the kids when they were little!

Supplies Needed for Play Dough Turkeys:

• Play dough – we like to use homemade
• Feathers from the craft store
• Googly eyes
• Construction paper or craft foam for beaks and wattles

We had SO much fun creating turkeys!  The feathers were very satisfying to poke into the play dough.  Owen enjoyed sticking them in and pulling them out and rearranging them.

And the finished turkeys were adorable.

Owen (age 4.5) made this one completely by himself.

And when I came back to the room after getting Jonathan up from his nap, he had turned it into a monster turkey with a horn a lots of eyes!

I set Jonathan up with a turkey to decorate at his high chair.  I did the play dough part, and he did the feathers.  He LOVED exploring the feathers!  He kept saying, “Soft!  Soft!”  This project entertained him much longer than I thought it would.

This activity was inspired by the play dough turkeys on Teach Preschool. I also love her patterning lesson with a sticky paper turkey!