Fingerprint Turkey T-Shirts

Why are you shaking like a leaf, hanging from the drapes like a frightened cat? Just because I said something about letting kids paint t-shirts for Thanksgiving? That’s no reason to have a panic attack. Sure, you’ve conjured up images of paints spilled onto your carpet, paint in your child’s hair, paint all over the furniture. But it doesn’t have to be so traumatizing to let your child get creative. Crawl down from the drapes, settle your nerves, and let’s get started. Any child is going to love making a turkey t-shirt and you’ll be so thrilled because the cleanup is a breeze.

Use non-toxic ink pads as the paint source for the t-shirts. It’s a good idea to lay down plastic or newspaper before beginning but, again, don’t panic. Kids can touch the ink pad with their fingers to create the turkey shirt for Thanksgiving and the ink is spill-proof. You can use just one color of ink to make the entire turkey or you can use assorted colors. Just be sure that the ink is a permanent type.

If an adult sticks his or her thumb on the ink pad (brown is good), then presses it onto the shirt, you can get a much larger turkey body than if a child does it. However, a child can make a large thumbprint by rolling the thumb on the ink pad so that the ink gets on both sides of the thumb. Press the thumbprint onto the shirt, rolling it from one side to the other, to make a large print. Make a slightly smaller print for the head of the turkey.

Create feathers for the turkey by pressing fingers to the ink pad, then pressing them onto the shirt, and do this around the original thumbprint, so that you have several rows of the fingerprint feathers.

After the feathers are all in place the kids can wipe off their fingers to remove the ink. If needed, a bit of nail polish remover can help wipe away the ink. Just make sure kids wash their hands after that.

With clean hands kids can draw a yellow beak, black eyes, a red wattle, and brown feet, just by using paint markers. Since they work like regular markers – but contain real paint – kids can easily draw the features onto the turkey.

Sure, kids are going to love making their own fingerprint turkey shirts but, while they’re at it, why not have them make fingerprint turkey place cards, too. It’ll be a great Thanksgiving, with the kids in their turkey t-shirts, and you’ll appear to be able to maintain your composure after all.
Fingerprint Turkey


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