thumbprint turkeys - a thanksgiving craft for toddlers

With Ethan now totally fixated on Hanukkah and Christmas, we've ultimately glossed over Thanksgiving. I'm not too sad because it's probably my least favorite holiday ever, food and all (yeah, I said it), but I still couldn't let it slip by without even one tiny activity. Every year we've done something with the typical handprint turkey so I wanted to do something a little different this year -- but without having to bypass on the fun hands-in-paint experience that has become a little synonymous with holiday crafting in our home.

Enter the thumbprint turkeys. I thought of this because we did a "thumbkin patch" Halloween activity two Halloweens ago. It made for some pretty abstract turkeys, but that's what made this so fun.

The goods: some paint (brown for the turkey body and whatever colors your little artist wants for the tail feathers -- Ethan, of course, chose all of them), glue, googley eyes and paper. We used little cardstock squares so we could make these in bulk and hand them out to some family and friends for Thanksgiving.

We painted Ethan's pointer finger brown and he got to work stamping on the turkey bodies.

Next, dip those little thumbs into the paint and then around the turkey body to make those tailfeathers! Totally abstract. Totally fun.

We used tissue paper triangles for the beaks ("turkey noses," if you ask Ethan) and then our fun little thumbprint turkeys were ready to go.