Thanksgiving Decorations to Make with Your Little Turkey

After creating such fun Halloween decorations with Gv this year, I knew I wanted to repeat the experience when we decorated for Thanksgiving.

I decided on three projects, all of which avoided using paint.

Tissue Wreath

I thought Gv might enjoy the tactile experience of tissue paper, so I decided to grab a paper plate and some glue and see what she did with it:

I put our trusty shower curtain liner down on the ground before we embarked on this project, because, well, glue!

Apparently tissue paper is the most delicious thing ever, because for the first ten minutes, all she wanted to do was stick it in her mouth and lick it.

Ew.

Once she decided she'd had her fill of the tasty little paper wafers, we got down to business.

I first cut out a circle from the center of a paper plate.  Do not worry about how neat this circle is, because it will be completely covered up with tissue paper and it's just silly to waste time being all OCD about something like that.

Plus, extra time cutting means extra tissue paper ingested...

Just fold the plate enough to snip the center and then cut out a circle.  Years of school figures mean I can create a pretty mean circle out of anything.

Next, cut out some squares from harvest-colored tissue paper (I chose red, orange, yellow and green).  Feel free to reuse stuffing from old gifts, because this project will wrinkle up the squares anyway.

Finally, drizzle a bit of glue (the wet stuff, not a pansy glue stick) over the face of the plate.  I suggest showing your little one how to put the tissue paper on the plate first.  Really make a production of jamming it on there and then taking your hand away, otherwise he or she might decide to snack some more...

You'll probably want to add more glue for the outermost layers.  Rather than drizzling it over the plate again, I just put a dot on a square of paper at a time and handed it to Gv to mash down.

Voila!  The perfect craft for a toddler, because really, this is all the wreath could ever look like anyway:

Handprint Turkey

I wanted to make a turkey out of tracings of Gv's hands and feet.  I grabbed some construction paper (brown, red, orange, yellow and green) and followed the same basic steps I did for the Halloween ghosts.

I traced each of Gv's feet onto brown paper (had to make one of these for the grandparents, you know) and then outlined them in black marker.  I added eyes and a beak and cut them out.

Next, I traced Gv's hands onto the other colors of paper before handing them over to "decorate" on her own with markers:

I didn't trace the "feathers" in black marker, because I thought they looked better plain.

I cut those out and then glued the turkey body (foot tracing) on top of the arranged feathers (hands).

  

Leaf Wreath

I decided to make another wreath, but this time using handprint tracings to look like leaves.

I should have saved this for another day, because Gv was still so enamored with putting the  marker caps back on and taking the markers out of the box and putting them back into the box, but I was a gal on a mission and wanted to move on to something else.  

I'd wanted to create this entire wreath from tracings of her hand, but three was all I was going to get.

Her feet were stationary, though, so I traced a zillion of those and figured they would work just as well as hands, because there are plenty of leaves that look like feet, too.

I added the veins to the leaves and glued them on another paper plate that I cut out like the tissue wreath above.

Do you decorate for Thanksgiving?  If so, do you put up elaborate adornments around your house, or handmade creations like these?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

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