Making Handprint Turkey Window "Clings"

We've been having quite a bit of fun making snowflake "clings" out of glue this week, but I thought maybe we might try something a little more ambitious - something with color.

To make the hand print turkeys, I traced the children's hands on white paper, and placed a piece of wax paper over that. Then I used the outline underneath, as a guide for the glue.

To get the color of brown that I wanted to outline the turkeys in, I added five drops of green, and three drops of red food coloring to a half empty bottle of Elmer's school glue. I didn't want too much brown glue, but I wanted enough in the bottle, so that it would still pour nicely.

After adding a few details like legs, a wing, and an eye, I left the outlines to dry overnight. Then I started filling them in.

I decided to add some stripes across the fingers, to separate the colors of the feathers. And, I wanted a lighter color brown for the body, than the outline color, so the eye, and wing would still show up. I managed the lighter brown, by swirling on a little of the dark brown, and some plain white glue, and mixing them together with a toothpick.

To get the colors on the feathers, I filled the spaces in with white glue, and then added a drop of food coloring to each space, using a toothpick again, for mixing.

Then, I had to wait for them to dry (this was the hardest part). Actually, I got a little impatient, and tried peeling them off the wax paper before they were completely dry. This resulted in a few holes, which had to be repaired with additional glue, and allowed to dry for even longer - I should have waited.

Finally, when they were completely dry, I peeled them, wet the back side, and stuck them to the window, just as with the snowflakes.

They were a little more difficult to make, than the snowflakes, but now that we have the hang of it, the possibilities are pretty much endless.

It's great to be a homeschooler.