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No Bones About It


The most important question to ask the day after Thanksgiving is “What should we do with all of these leftovers?” I’m guessing that my answer this year is a bit different than most – though I bet many of you will be sorry you didn’t do it.

It started like any other holiday. We pigged out on turkey and all the trimmings and went to bed with the ‘itis. The next day turkey turned into turkey sandwiches and pie was still a diet staple. But now we’re on the third day, which is soup day.

The leftover turkey and bones go into the pot to simmer all day into a yummy soup.


Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

How about after I strain the soup?


Now you see where I’m going with this!

What better time to talk to the kids about our bones, and how they all fit together! When else will you have a real skeleton to play with?

I show the kids the skin first.


Abby loves touching the skin. Briana only repeats “Ew! Disgusting!” While they tentatively touch the skin, we talk about skin. I’ve learned lately to ask questions first to see what the kids think so I ask them if they think turkey skin is like our skin rather than starting with telling them that.

The girls rub their hands and frown at the lump on the table. Abby finally says “Why is my skin soft and the turkey’s skin is so bumpy?” I explain that the turkey’s skin isn’t stretched over his bones anymore so it sags. I also say that as we get older our skin gets looser and even human skin will be wrinkly like the turkeys.  Mom, you’ll love this if you’re reading. Briana then says “No. Grandmother’s skin isn’t all wrinkly and she’s old. Her skin is smooth.” I tell her that Grandmother exercises and moisturizes and those things can help your skin look better as you age.

Then I pull out my favorite bone-


Isn’t that a gorgeous specimen! I let the kids look at it and feel it and then it’s bedtime. No- no one had skeleton related nightmares. In fact Briana wakes up to see the cleaned off bones on the paper towel that I posted earlier and asks “Can we make a wreath out of those bones?” When I balk she adds, “for Halloween I mean”. She’s really into wreaths these days! Instead, I suggest, we should see if we can rebuild our turkey’s skeleton. Briana loves the idea. Abby is skeptical of bones (but not skin?!) and watches from afar.

The point is to get the kiddies thinking about how bones fit together. You can easily supplement the learning by actually getting a diagram of a turkey skeleton and trying to recreate it. I want the critical thinking and skeleton understanding rather than the puzzle.

What bones do you think a turkey has? A leg bone. Ok, which of these looks like it could be a turkey leg bone? A wing. Do you think wings have bones in them? Ok, then let’s find a bone that looks like it could be for a wing.


Yes, at points we did “need” that flashlight to examine the bones.

I know nothing about a turkey skeleton but the point wasn’t to get it just right (this time) but to think through the shape of the bones and how they fit and work together. The kids added an extra set of leg bones when they wanted to make sure the turkey could kick. We talked about how the bones fit into sockets when we found what looked to us like a hip bone and how they then can move around. I demonstrated what it looks like when Abby pops her shoulder out. I showed them the spine and we talked about how one of the spinal disks ruptured in my back and what that would look like on a turkey.  With every bone we point to the analogous one on our bodies. Any bones that we didn’t know what to do with went into the middle. Eventually we came up with this:



(I didn’t leave all of the bones out. The tiny ones and a couple that looked broken and were sharp were trashed first – my kids are still young for playing with sharp and tiny things. Plus we already got hurt once this weekend, so I’m feeling extra cautious.)

We then consult an airtight source on turkey bones – a coloring page that Abby got from gymnastics. Briana decides that what we thought might have been a wing bone was better suited to be a beak bone and we adjust our skeleton.


If you look closely you’ll also notice another change. We took a few minutes to make a wish on the wishbone, and snap it, but then we put the broken pieces back.


I love an activity that entertains, educates, and feeds my family. We’re off to have some soup – after clarifying that there are no bones in the soup. I promise. It’s not bone soup! There are NO bones in there. Just try it. J

I hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving- however you celebrated it!

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

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