Thankful Turkey

Here’s a tradition that gets fuller and fuller: our yearly turkey craft to celebrate Thanksgiving. The number of hands have expanded over the years, but each one have wonderful things to be thankful for:

2006

2010

This craft isn’t too difficult to pull together, and it involves all the children. One of the older ones draws out the larger turkey. All the children trace their hands on a separate, colored piece of paper. After cutting out their hand, they write things that they are thankful for. Then, with a little glue, the turkey fills out its feathers with the family’s thankful hands.

Funny. The original craft is quite popular in schools and such. But only 1 hand is used per turkey. See here. Ours looks more like a peacock!

We’ll be posting some other Thanksgiving ideas and traditions through the week. Do you have some cool traditions or projects? Comment below.

About Chris & Wendy Jeub

The Jeub Family live in Monument, Colorado, with 14 of their 16 children. They encourage couples to love God and love one another, building an atmosphere of love in their homes.

http://aboundantlyblessed.wordpress.com Becky

So cute. This is a great tradition. Thank you for sharing I think I can manage to add this to our traditions, too.
Viki

I have a Christmas tradition that involves hand prints as well. I bought a solid color (red) tree skirt, and every year I have each child dip their hand (or foot, if they are really small) in fabric paint. They get lined up down the skirt in as straight of a line as possible. I label each print with their names underneath them. Then I section that year’s hand prints off and put what year it is. One can get a glimpse of how big each hand is getting, plus it allows for showing each new addition. It’s priceless. Once my first skirt is filled up (which won’t take long), I will probably use it as a decoration on the wall, and work on filling up another skirt. I hope this makes sense.
Tiffany Jenson

We do a version of this with a tree trunk and various fall color handprints for leaves on a really big window. All the kids know immediately which hand is theirs and it helps to really put value into thankfulness. One year we mixed it up and used footprints. It is always a great conversaion piece for guests as well.
Abby

For the last few years, we’ve had a a special box which comes out every Thanksgiving. We each write down (or draw) something we are thankful for from the year gone by. The next year we read out what we wrote last year. It always brings a smile to the table followed by “oh yeeeeah I remember that”.
We also have all the kids heights on the wall in the hall-should be done on birthdays I guess but the first time we randomly did it was Christmas. we add to it each year with a christmas photo. Shows us all getting older
http://jent-manyblessings.blogspot.com JenT

This looks like fun. Thanks for the great idea. We’ll have to do this…soon…while I still feel like it.
http://jordanfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com Jennifer Jordan

We do this,too! Love the fullness of your turkey! )