Holiday "Hand" Decorations
Tasty Thanksgiving Recipes
Celebrate Thanksgiving

Let the kids give you a hand with making decorations for the holidays. Keeps them in the spirit and the results are very festive. Your kids will love showing off what they have done and they are usually very helpful in carefully storing them away for the next year. You can make these easy decorations from the list of household items below:

• Construction paper, reds, greens, yellows, browns, oranges (Thanksgiving and Christmas colors)
• Pencils, markers, crayons
• Scissors, blunt nose ones are find
• Pipe cleaners of all colors
• Glue (White Glue works best)
• Wiggle eyes (under supervision if your children are very small)
• Paper bags (Brown for Reindeers)
• Wooden clothes pins
• Red or green ribbon
• Scotch tape
• Glitter or glitter glue (under supervision if your children are very small)
• A large, tree shaped pine cone that is open, look for one that stands upright. Smaller, open cones for tree ornaments
• A few cotton balls
• Dental floss and a needle with small beads.... or use some small beaded necklaces you don't want anymore.

How To Make a Turkey

  Help your child trace their hands on some
construction paper and then cut them out.

Let them color the feathers (four fingers) of the turkeys tail.

Glue on a wiggle eye and then a short bit of
red ribbon for the wattle. Cut out a red comb
from more construction paper and glue it on the
head. Color in the bill.

Use yellow pipe cleaners for the legs, bend to
shape. Add glitter to the tail feathers if wanted.

Use a wooden clothes pin and glue sideways on the back. Let dry. Now you have turkeys you can clip on curtains, etc. to decorate for Thanksgiving.

Reindeer Puppet

A simple brown paper bag makes a great Rudolf! Just fold the corners under (glue if you want) so the bag looks like the illustration below.

Let your child trace their hands on some construction paper for the antlers, color them anyway they like, and glue or staple them on the back of the bag.

Either use wiggly eyes and glue, or let the children draw in the eyes. Use red construction paper for the nose and glue on, or color in the nose. Draw in the mouth with markers or crayons. Add glitter is wanted, tot he antlers.

Handprint Wreaths
Let your children trace their hands on construction paper using different shades of green. Move one hand on top of the other, forming a circle. It takes about ten or so hands to make a nice full wreath. When you have the shape you are happy with, clue the wrists, one over lapping the next, until you have a circle. Alternate the greens to give the wreath depth.

 

Make a bow from red ribbon, or cut one out from red construction paper and glue on to the wreath. Cut out some red dots for holly berries from red construction paper and glue them on. You can tape the wreaths up or punch holes, cover them with scotch tape to strengthen them, and tie some string to the wreath. Add glitter if wanted.

Pine Cone Christmas Tree Center Piece

Pick our pine cones, large and small. Small to hang on the tree and large as a centerpiece. Make sure all the cones are opened up and that the centerpiece cone can stand up straight.

Centerpiece: Glue some cotton balls around the base. Lightly dab some glue on the balls and add glitter if wanted.

Dab the ends of the "leaves" with glue and dip in glitter.

Either use old necklaces or string beads on string or dental floss. First Tie a bead at one end of the dental floss and thread a needle at the other end of the floss. String the beads and tie of the last end with another bead. Wrap the beads around the pine cone, gluing them to the cone as you go.