Thanksgiving Craft

It's pretty evident that I'm in love with handprint art at the moment... cause it's creative, cute, easy to make, and the kids love it. And they're great keepsakes for the years to come. I got a new idea recently, and thanks to a weekend visit at IKEA, found some cheap placemats to help make my idea reality - Thanksgiving placemats for the kids. After naps today, we painted them.

I painted a basic tree trunk on each kid's placemat.

And then they used their fingertips to paint the leaves.

Faith wanted all green leaves. And Nathan wanted all yellow leaves.

But soon they agreed that more colors was more fun ;) 

I was surprised at how well the kids painted on their own!

Though Nathan went a little leaf happy and put leaves everywhere.

But now his just looks like a really big tree with leaves falling ;-) 

Once they finished their leaves, it was time to add a turkey. 

A handprint turkey, of course!

Mommy added a few little details to the turkey's head once the kids were done. 

And then the kids used dry spaghetti noodles to paint grass on their placemats. 

And here is our finished product!

Each year, I'll write (on the back) what each child is thankful for and what their age is that year. We started talking about what "thankful" means tonight - Nathan said he was thankful for socks. And Faith is thankful for a plastic circle... lol  We'll see what they say on Thanksgiving. I'm guessing Nathan will say "Daddy" and Faith will say "Cake" (as in Strawberry Shortcake, the character, not the dessert - though she loves that, too). It'll be fun to see and remember what they say every year.

I'm proud at how well the kids painted. With the exception of Faith's eyebrows, nothing got paint on it but the placemats. And they turned out so great! A wonderful keepsake.