Parent life / The disguise-a-turkey project
Every November, a Paper Turkey Enters Witness Protection
The disguise-a-turkey project asks a child to save a bird from Thanksgiving. The first adult to find the instruction sheet becomes the getaway driver.
Every November an instruction sheet comes home in a backpack. A paper turkey is attached. The child's job is to disguise it as something else so it can escape Thanksgiving dinner. Hilldale Public Schools in Oklahoma described it in 2020 as a common project in the lower grades, and that year the fifth-grade teachers offered it to their students too, on the theory that after the year everybody had had, they might enjoy it. The gallery included a turkey disguised as Santa, and another as a bowling ball and pins.
Seasonal employment or sporting equipment. The program keeps an open mind.
On Reddit, a working mother described disguising a turkey at 6:45 one morning. Her five-year-old's first proposal was a rooster.
It is a modest career change. The bird keeps most of its equipment.
They settled on a fairy ballerina. She admitted later in the thread that the sheet had been pinned to the family bulletin board through an entire long weekend, and that she had simply forgotten. She also said that her child had enjoyed it.
A Dodgers fan posted their son's entry, a paper turkey named Clayton Turkshaw. When other fans pointed out how much help it looked like the child had had, the parent conceded the help, and said the idea was the boy's.
Our own instruction sheet was found in the minivan on the Monday before Thanksgiving, under a soccer cleat, by the dog. The youngest proposed a disguise as a dog, on the grounds that nobody eats the dog. My wife said this was sound reasoning. We had no brown felt. We had a gray sock.
By 7:10 a.m. the turkey was a mouse. The youngest accepted the change with the calm of a person whose plan had worked. The eldest, driving with her learner's permit and me in the passenger seat, said that a mouse at Thanksgiving is in more danger, not less. The middle one said that depends on the house.
It went in the backpack with the glue still wet, which I believe is how all of these go in.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Public parent discussion: a 6:45 a.m. turkey-disguise scramble reddit.com
- Hilldale Public Schools: Fifth Graders Help Save Turkeys, November 20, 2020 hilldaleps.socs.net
- Public parent post: Clayton Turkshaw kindergarten project reddit.com