Baby Food Turkey

Since I had a LOT of baby food jars coming in and out of my house, I was looking for a craft to keep the girls occupied over Thanksgiving and for a cute centerpiece for our table.  We ended up making a handprint turkey and I think it turned out really cute!

Things You'll Need:
 - Construction paper, pencil, & scissors
 - Baby Food Jar (washed and label removed)
 - Brown paint & a paint brush
 - Google-y eyes
 - Hands to trace

First we put the first coat of brown paint on the baby food jar.  No need to paint the 'top' of the jar since you'll never see it.  We did this and then let it dry while we made the hand prints.  I'd suggest a second coat so it has good coverage.

While waiting for it to dry, we traced my daughters hand on yellow, red, and orange construction paper.  Cut them out and then you can either tape, glue, or hot glue them together to create a fan look for tail feathers.  I found it worked well to flip the hands on either side so that the thumbs were at the bottom and you just sort of move the layers around so you can see all of the colors.  One thing to note is to make sure that the bottom goes straight across (don't angle so much that the thumbs are pointing down) or you will have problems with them bending or getting squashed when you put them on the jar. 

Once the jar is dried, you can glue the hand 'feathers' to the back of the jar and let it dry.  Next you can add the two google-y eyes and we just cut a small yellow triangle from the yellow construction paper for a nose.

What was extra fun about this craft was that my oldest decided she would make one of her own when she saw what we did; except she flipped it a little.  She used cool colors (blue, purple, green) and painted the jar blue with a layer of glitter paint(!!!).  Then she added a red and white pom-pom hat to it and called it a Christmas Peacock! :)