Kid's Craft - Handprint Turkeys

I have been watching our chiropractor's little boy on Fridays since February in exchange for our monthly family adjustments and a sweet discount on supplements :) I didn't really need to but being the frugal person I am it is REALLY hard for me to turn down such a great deal! Besides, Kyan, the little boy I watch is just 3 days older than Evie so its good for both of them to have that play date for practicing socialization - especially since they are so opposite in some respects. Anyhow, I have been meaning to do more "crafts" and learning activities with them but truthfully I am either too wiped out to bother by the time Friday hits and just take advantage of the playmate or I am running late (always! one of my worst character traits - I'm working on it) and don't have time to grab the stuff I need before we rush out the door. But FINALLY, this Friday, I had an idea that came to me as I laid in bed the night before that didn't take much for supplies so even though I was running a few minutes late (again) I ran and grabbed the stuff. And I was sooooo glad I did too! Poor Ky was really not wanting dad to leave him (they have been really busy working on a new office space they will be opening and he of course wants to see him instead of us)... To try to calm him down, I brought out some big paper and E's safety scissors and markers and after refusing them for a few minutes, Evie got him interested and he tried out the scissors and after a bit he was just telling his dad bye with no anxiety yay!

ha, just a cute drawing by Evie on our way over to Ky's - its been really neat to see her starting to have the control to draw actual shapes. of course she can't very often draw what she wants, but she is drawing stuff that resembles something :)

Okay, so on to the craft...
You will need:
paper - I used brown paper that had come in a package but white would
scissors
markers or crayons
glue stick or tape would work
child's hand

-Start by tracing your kiddo's handprints (one or both) on a sheet of paper. With my not quite 3 year old subjects, I found that lightly holding their fingers in place as I traced to keep them from moving them and creating a fugly turkey shape.
-So, then once you have the "turkey" handprint traced, you can either just cut it out or you could let beforementioned kiddo color it. I just cut them out since they were on brown paper.
-Then give the remaining paper (or a new sheet of paper if you don't have much left) to them with a bunch of crayons or markers or whatever coloring medium you prefer and let them just go to town! I tried to get them to do some orange spots for the beak and red for the "gobbler" (the part that hangs from their chin) but mostly just let them go. It was funny to see how they each chose different colors. Evie used a lot of purple and Ky was more into the orange with zero purple :)




 Then I just drew a "feather" template and retraced it on the colored paper. I made it a very basic leaf type shape and used 8 for each hand print. I didn't want to cover up the handprint shape so I glued the tail feathers behind the fingers and then I used the other four and overlapped them to make a wing.

This is one of Ky's, I put his up for decoration on a big mirror hanging in their family room. Also, I apologize for the photo quality for the above pictures, I brought my sls but left the memory card in the computer at home. Oops. So I used my phone camera.

See all of the purple in Evie's? :)

So, there you have it. I thought afterwards that it would be cute to make them into "puppets" with a popsicle stick too.