Handy Turkey and Pilgrims

Trace your hand and make a turkey. This is the traditional Thanksgiving art activity. Mom took it a step further and let us trace our hands to make Indians and Pilgrims as well. This card is pretty self-explanatory and simple.

I remember being given art projects to do to keep us kids busy at Nana's house on Thanksgiving (and Easter) while our moms and Nana fixed the food. I have no memory of what the men were doing.

There are lots of other variations on this theme. Here are a couple I have seen:

Have the children paint the palm of their hand and thumb brown and each of their fingers different colors. Have them press their wet hand on paper, a white paper plate, or on a cut-out wooden hand (like you see above) to make a colorful hand print. Add a beak, eyes, waddle, and feet with markers and you have a turkey hand print.



Here is a cute variant which uses handprints of everyone in the family. Trace each person's hand on a piece of different colored construction paper and cut them out. Layer them with the biggest (probably Dad's) on the bottom up to smallest on top. Add a big circle for a body, a smaller circle for a head, a beak, wattle and eyes.