With Thanksgiving next week, I had hoped to post up a few of these but well, I’ll be honest- the gift guide is consuming a lot of my blogging time. Still, I didn’t want that to get in the way of posting some Thanksgiving art for babies posts. We’ll have a messier version up next week, I hope, but for now; here’s the next part of mess-free art for babies. If you’ve seen past mess-free art posts, you’ll notice that we’ve usually done tracing of the hands and/or painting in a plastic baggie. I post these projects not because I’m trying to discourage messy play (I think that’s important too) but because I’m trying to be mindful that sometimes Squeaker just doesn’t want to put her hands in something. Granted, I think we’ll be doing a lot more messy art projects and sensory play because she really seems to enjoy it. But I also want to offer her an alternative.
This doesn’t take a lot as far as materials or time, but it was still pretty fun to do!
Materials Needed:
* Crayons or markers (I’ve just found crayons to be far less messy but markers are definitely a good choice as well)
* Paper (we used plain printer paper though you can also use construction paper or card stock)
* Willing participant (Squeaker sat, mostly patiently, on my lap for this)
Step by Step
* Have child seated on lap, for as long as they’re willing
* Pick your desired color
* Trace the child’s hand (we weren’t aiming for neatness, I just wanted to trace her hand)
* On the thumb part, draw an eye and waddle (dangly thing on the turkey’s neck).
* Underneath the ‘turkey’, draw legs
* If your child is old enough, color your turkey in
Variation 1
* Repeat above steps but also trace your hand alongside your child’s. Or have your hand’s facing each other (for this one, I traced my left hand and Squeaker’s right hand)
Get the whole family involved for a cute Thanksgiving card or display piece for the wall! Optionally, cut out your turkeys, laminate them and create a turkey hand print banner.
There were a few other mess free art projects I wanted to try with her, but her patience was wearing thin. I’m not going to push this because I want her to enjoy this stuff. So that’s all we have. Still, I think that we both had a lot of fun and now I have two more pieces of art to add to her art binder.
Kori
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