James Audubon and Turkeys

                                         
Over the weekend, I was brainstorming what I could do that would touch upon Thanksgiving, without actually doing some ridiculous Thanksgiving lesson plan. I decided to teach the sixth graders about James Audubon and about the careers of scientific and/or medical illustrators. I then led them in a step by step drawing exercise of a cartoon turkey. The results are very fabulous. I will post the results soon. The image above has nothing to do with the lesson itself, but I found it funny. 

Tom Turkey



As the mother of two toddlers and also an art teacher, I am frequently doing activities at home that are great fun and quite messy. Recently, my 3.5 year old was given his first homework: to disguise Tom the Turkey so that he doesn't get found on Thanksgiving! I asked my boy what he wanted Tom the Turkey to be and he said, "Batman!"... and so here is Tom (a.k.a. Batman). We were sent home with a turkey printed on brown paper, had to glue it to a piece of tag board, had the boy color the feathers, and then he helped me to paint the body gray. We went from there... the talented husband added the cape!