Playdough Turkey

Invite kids to create their own playdough turkey with this invitation to create turkey activity. You only need some playdough, pipe cleaner, feathers, and a few other supplies!

RELATED: Turkey Template

Kids will love building their own turkey! They can even make the pipe cleaner turkey heads or you can make these for them to add. This is a great fine motor activity for kids. Kids will love placing all of the colorful feathers onto the turkey.

For more turkey activities, see the following:

• Disguise a turkey printable
• Turkey coloring pages
• Turkey suncatcher

Supplies Needed

• Brown playdough – make your own using our playdough recipe. Or you can buy brown playdough (it may be hard to find so a substitute can be a brown modeling air dry clay).
  • If you use air dry clay, let the clay dry and you will have a keepsake turkey when you are done!
• Feathers
• Pipe cleaners
• Small googly eyes
• Glue gun (adult assistance)

How to Make a Playdough Turkey

1. Make the turkey head with brown pipe cleaner.

Make the turkey heads ahead of time! To make the heads, begin by spiraling a brown pipe cleaner down to the shape of a P. Once you are about 2 inches from the bottom of the pipe cleaner, secure the head with a tiny drop of hot glue (adult assistance).

For toddlers and kids under the age of 4, avoid using the small googly eyes and pipe cleaner pieces. You can print out a face of a turkey and glue to the pipe cleaner instead.

2. Make the wattle and beak.

Snip a small piece of red pipe cleaner- about an inch in length. The measurement doesn’t have to be precise! Also snip a piece of orange pipe cleaner- just a little bit smaller than the red piece.

Fold the orange piece in half to form an open triangle. This is the turkey’s beak. Bend the red piece to form a tiny hook at the top. This is the turkey’s wattle.

3. Glue the pieces to the turkey head.

Place a tiny dot of hot glue (adult assistance) on each end of the orange pipe cleaner, and then press each side to the turkey head to make the beak.

Place a tiny dot of hot glue (adult assistance) on the hook of the wattle and then place the hook over the turkey’s beak. The hook should fit right inside the triangular part of the beak, filling in the tiny gap.

Glue a small googly eye on each side of the turkey’s head.

4. Make the turkey body.

Now it’s time to build your turkey! Start by pinching off a large piece of brown play dough, and then roll it into a ball.

5. Add the turkey head to playdough.

Insert the neck into the front part of your ball where a turkey’s head should go!

6. Decorate the turkey.

Decorate your turkey with tail feathers! Kids will have fun adding lots of feathers to their turkey.

This craft makes an excellent invitation-to-build sensory tray for little hands! To make setup even easier, you could cut triangles for beaks and use googly eyes pressed into the playdough instead of making the turkey heads.

For kids under the age of 4, make sure you do not use any small pieces. You can print a picture of a turkey head and glue that to a pipe cleaner as an alternative.