Boy Mama: Handprint Turkeys without the Mess

Handprint Turkeys without the Mess

I love handprint turkeys. They capture the season and a moment in time with your little one’s handprints. so well. The only problem, however, is when your little one refuses to allow you to put paint on his hands to make the handprint. That is my eldest, well, actually it is both of my kids so I had to create a new way to get that adorable handprint turkey done by Thanksgiving. Here is what I did.

Handprint Turkeys without the Mess

Materials

2 sponges
Sharpie
scissors
hot glue
two bottle caps or a cork
paints
small piece of orange and red paper
small piece of black paper or googly eyes
white paper

Creating the Sponges

Feathers: Trace your child’s hand on a piece of paper. Then cut out the shape and place it on a sponge. Cut the sponge the shape of your child’s hand.

Body: Cut a turkey body shape from the second sponge.

Sponge Handles: On the back of each sponge, hot glue a bottle cap or corkscrew. This will be a “handle” for the sponges.

Making the Turkey

Prepare the paints by setting out some brown paint for the turkey’s body and 4-5 other colors for the feathers. Place the colors next to one another as shown below.

Holding onto the “handle” on the back of the hand, dip the sponge in the colored paints so it looks similar to the sponge below.

Turn the sponge over and press it onto the paper a few times to create the feathers

Here is what our feathers looked like.

Next, dip the turkey’s body in the brown paint and press it onto the feathers as shown below.

Add eyes (black paper), a beak (orange paper) and the wattle (red paper). Add legs if you like as well!

Now you have a handprint turkey to share with family and friends and your little one didn’t even have to get messy!

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16 thoughts on “Boy Mama: Handprint Turkeys without the Mess”

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This is a great idea! I just wanted to let you know that I have a kids activities submission blog (Simply Creative Kids) and I am linking to this post if you don’t mind. You are welcome to submit your projects if you’d like!

I love this! I wish I would have thought of this when we did our handprint/footprint turkeys the other day. My son did NOT want his hands in the paint at first.

Heres the link to my project with the kids if you wanted to see it 🙂

I’ll be sharing your link on my Facebook page today!

Erica

November 27, 2013 at 12:54 PM

Forgot my link, whoops lol!

http://jisforjosiah.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanksgiving-craft-hand-and-foot-print.html

That was our project 😉

Take care!

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haha, love the idea of a sponge handprint! I was thinking.. mess free handprints eh? I want to see how this is! You’re not going to believe what I just posted today.. sponge printing! (which was actually my backup idea as my stencil failed in my first attempt at painting the lanterns)

Pingback: Thanksgiving Activities for Tots at Tuesday Tots

What a fabulous mess free activity (although I can guarantee that my two would be able to find a way to make it messy!) I love it and am going to be featuring it over on Rainy Day Mum this week.