Thanksgiving Hand and Foot Turkey

What better way to preserve your child's growing hands and feet than by making art with them!

After Thanksgiving Day has passed and it is time to take down the decorations, this art project will be one to add to the scrapbook! It is super easy and requires very few materials.

MATERIALS

• Brown, red, orange, yellow and white cardstock or construction paper
• Glue
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Markers, glitter, sequins (optional)

STEPS

1. Trace your child’s foot (with shoe on) onto brown paper and cut out, this will be the turkey’s body.
2. Trace your child’s hand several times onto the different colors of paper, these will be the turkey’s feathers. The more traced hands you do the fuller your turkey’s feathers will be.
3. Cut out all of the feathers and lay them onto a background paper, to see what order you like them.
4. Glue feathers down on to background paper and continue to glue all the feathers and then the turkey’s body.
5. On different colors of paper, draw a beak, a wattle, some feet and eyes for the turkey, cut them out and glue them on to the turkey’s body.
6. (Optional) Use markers, glitter, or sequins to decorate your turkey’s feathers.
7. Remember to autograph and date this piece of art, so when you make this project next year you can see how much bigger the turkey is!

An alternative to this project: Instead of using just one child’s hand for the feathers, you could have each family member or student in a class trace their hand to make all of the turkey feathers.

Dawn Sorem teaches arts and crafts classes and she does private classes/parties for both children and adults. If you would like more information or to set up a time to have her do an art project for a group you can contact her at envelopcards@gmail.com. Dawn is also the owner and designer of Envelop Cards, you can view her latest designs and see a list of her upcoming classes at: www.envelopcards.com