Handprint Turkey Shirts: An Easy Thanksgiving Idea

Handprint turkey shirts are an easy and cute craft idea for the kid’s table at Thanksgiving. You just need simple white t-shirts and some fabric markers.

Hey there! Thanksgiving Day can be super busy as you’re preparing a giant feast for the whole family. Keep the little ones busy too by having them make Handprint Turkey Shirts. It’s an easy and cute craft idea for the kid’s table at Thanksgiving using plain white t-shirts and fabric markers.

I know it’s not even Halloween yet, but I’m already thinking ahead to Thanksgiving. You see, my younger brother puts together an A-MAZING spread of food every year and I’m already drooling and watching what I eat now in anticipation of this big event (Read: Step away from the Halloween candy bowl, Carrie!!). My brother and his partner are a dynamic duo when it comes to hosting this extravagant meal. They think of everything – even the butter is shaped like a turkey!

T-minus 10 minutes… I feel like I’ve been waiting all year for this meal… My little brother hosts an amazing Thanksgiving! No detail is spared. Even the butter is festive!

A photo posted by Kenarry: Idea for the Home (@kenarryideas) on Nov 27, 2014 at 2:13pm PST

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One of the ways they go the extra mile at Thanksgiving is by having special gifts and activities for my boys. It’s not just the butter shaped like a turkey that makes it fun to go to their house for Thanksgiving. Sometimes it’s a Thanksgiving paper tablecloth that the boys can color and cover with Thanksgiving stickers. Other times it’s silly party hats like this one shaped like a slice of pumpkin pie or this one designed to look like a cooked turkey. One year they really knocked it out of the park though with this easy craft idea to make handprint turkey shirts.

How to Make Handprint Turkey Shirts for Thanksgiving

It’s incredibly easy to make kids’ handprint turkey shirts for Thanksgiving. You just need light colored short or long-sleeved shirts, fabric markers and a little creativity. And, while the kids are coloring them, you may want to whip up a batch of these adorable Thanksgiving turkey cookies.

What You Need:

White long sleeved shirts (Ours were Circo brand, but Target has the same/similar ones with a different brand name now. Any white kids’ shirt would work though.)
Fabric markers
Cardboard

Instructions:

1. Draw a handprint turkey on the shirts.

When we arrived for Thanksgiving, our hosts had already traced their hands and drew the outline of the turkey’s face and talons with a black marker. If you were hosting Thanksgiving for older kids, you could let them do this step themselves.

2. Line the shirts with cardboard.

It’s important to stuff a piece of cardboard inside the white shirt to prevent the markers from bleeding through to the backside of the shirt. It would probably be a good idea to do this before you trace your hand in the previous step too.

3. Have the kids color the handprint turkey shirts.

This is the fun part. Give the kids the fabric markers and let them get creative. We actually took the shirts home with us, colored them in our craft room and then the boys surprised my brother and his partner by wearing them the next year for Thanksgiving.

My older son was five at the time and took a more pragmatic and systematic approach to his coloring, making sure to color within the lines. He stuck with traditional colors making his turkey brown, the beak yellow-ish orange and of course, the turkey wattle needed to be red.

Our younger son was not quite three when we did this project so his approach to coloring the handprint turkey shirts was more haphazard and free-form.

He checked and double checked to make sure he used all the fabric marker colors though he seemed to favor the black. His small thin marker strokes would delight any modern impressionist painter. I know he was certainly proud of his handprint turkey shirt and couldn’t wait to show it off when he was finished.

4. Let the handprint turkey shirts dry.

Once the handprint turkey shirts are dry, you can wash and wear them to celebrate Thanksgiving. The fabric markers should resist fading through multiple machine washings.