DLTK's Holiday Crafts for Kids
Turkey Stained Glass Craft

This is an artsy craft that relies on oil pastels, school glue and a bit of creativity to make a beautiful Thanksgiving decoration.

It isn't real stained glass, but it's a great method for making art that looks like it is. It's a bit too difficult for kindergarten children (though you can use the template as a coloring page with oil pastels or crayons!). It's suitable for early grade school.

Materials:

• black paper,
• oil pastels
• regular school glue or black school glue (it's a thing!)
  

Instructions:

• Optional: Print out the template. Younger children can do the project using just the template and following the rest of the steps.
• Assuming you're using black paper, sketch a turkey stained glass image onto the paper with grey pencil or pencil crayon.
  • This can be a little stressful for children.
  • Encourage them to be creative... their work doesn't have to match the template exactly!
  • We used a ruler to draw the straight lines.
    
• Using basic white school glue or black colored school glue, trace around the lines. You're trying to make a glue drawing.
• Let dry completely.
• Use oil pastels to color in the shapes you've created with the glue. I like to put in one main color and a bit of a secondary color (so brown and a bit of orange, for example, for the turkey).
• Use your finger or a bit of paper towel to smudge the oil pastel together to make a pretty stained glass look. The color really pops!
• The lines you drew with glue should resist the oil pastel color and let the black show through once it's completely dry, looking like the lines in stained glass!
  

Craft Templates:

• After printing, close the template window to return to the main page.
• If the template doesn’t fit on one page, adjust your printer margins:
  • In most browsers: Print → More settings → Margins → Minimum
  • Or use Page Setup / Printer Setup in your printer dialog

Stained Glass Turkey Template

Printable version of these instructions