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Home | Make Colorful Turkey Handprint Placemats for Thanksgiving

Make Colorful Turkey Handprint Placemats for Thanksgiving

Since we'll have quite a few children over for Thanksgiving this year, we've been busy coming up with easy and fun craft ideas to keep everyone busy before the feast. One of the projects that we came up with, based on something by daughter did in kindergarten, is creating colorful festive Thanksgiving turkey handprint placemats. Since you'll need one for everyone at the dinner table, this project should keep the kids busy for a while.

Here's what you'll need:

  • Heavyweight 11 x 17" construction paper in a variety of colors (fall colors like brown, red, orange, and yellow are best)
  • Washable paint in various colors—we used Crayola Washable Kid's Paint
  • Paint brush
  • A small bowl of water (to rinse brush)
  • Markers
  • Crayons
  • Scissors

Make a series of 1/2-inch horizontal cuts on the short ends of the paper. Push every other tab made by these cuts up to give it a little lift and decorate the edges. Add a Thanksgiving message if you like at the top with the crayons, but make sure you leave about 8 inches of space below it for your handprint turkey.

First make the turkey's body by painting a the palm and thumb of a child's hand with brown paint. Press the hand onto the paper and hold for a few seconds. Make the turkey tail feathers by repeating the process with the remaining fingers, each in a different color. Work quickly so the paint doesn't dry on little ones' hands. Alternately, you can trace the hand with a crayon and paint the sections in, which might work better for younger kids.

Let your turkey dry for about an hour, then draw in details, like wings, feet, and eye, with the black marker. Draw a red beak and wattle with a red marker or crayon.

The end result is very cute and you can decorate it as much or as little as you like. The kids are always so proud to have everyone use their handiwork at the table. Sometime they're even to nice to want to use as placemats!