Thanksgiving placemats

Before our Thanksgiving break my little ones will be having their very own Thanksgiving feast right here in the classroom! We will be serving turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots, corn bread! We have been very busy preparing for our party by making turkey headband hats and hand print turkey place mats!

 I've seen so many variations of the turkey headband in the past two years here at my preschool and of course online, that I just incorporated my favorite aspects of the turkey headbands into one pretty cute little turkey if you ask me ;) Since my children are so little I was able to use a 12x18 piece of brown construction paper cut lengthways.   

We also have been hard at work making place mats for the party. I have loved this turkey craft since I first saw it right after Thanksgiving last year on Pinterest, and couldn't wait to do something with it. I started out by painting each child's right hand red, yellow and green, then their left hand brown and orange. The hands formed a half of circle around the paper. As you can see it can be tricky to get the hands perfectly centered, so I discovered that if you start with the middle handprint and work outwards it makes it easier to center it.  Once the paint dried I cut around the outside of the paper to give it a border using decorative scissors.

 

While the hand prints were drying I had the children make little turkeys that we would then glue in the middle of the handprints.

 Here are the finished place mats. I LOVE how they turned out. Some handprints were done on white construction paper (one of my classes) and some were done on beige paper (my other class). I personally think the beige paper gives it more of a fall themed feel, which I like very much. I personalized each by adding their names, year and HAPPY THANKSGIVING on the bottom.

 This is a placemat my son made last year and I am sure my daughter will be making this year (same teacher for both of my kids), so I can wait to set the table for them this year with their adorable placemats! I LOVE how his teacher personalized it by adding his name in the front underneath the poem and pictures of all the things he was thankful for on the back.