Video:Thanksgiving Woven Placemat Craft
with Meredith AndrewsThis Thanksgiving craft is fun for all ages, and helps build motor skills in young ones. Watch how to weave a paper Thanksgiving placemat from scratch, and see how to paint a turkey onto each craft using your child's hand.See Transcript
Transcript:Thanksgiving Woven Placemat Craft
Hello, my name is Meredith Andrews from the Little Shop of Crafts in New York City here for About.com. Today we will be making a woven placemat out of construction paper that is the perfect centerpiece for your holiday table.Thanksgiving Craft Supplies
- a pair of scissors
- a large paintbrush
- a small paintbrush
- brown, white, yellow, orange, and red latex or acrylic paint
- a black Sharpie a glue stick
- 3 pieces of construction paper, 12x18
Cut the Thanksgiving Mat Paper
You want to start off with orange piece of construction paper. What you're doing is creating the loom for the woven pieces of construction paper. And cut strips long wise, about an inch apart.If you're doing this project with a three to seven year old you might already want to have the paper cut. And then start the project there for them. If they're older than that they can help you with the cutting out of the pieces.
Weave the Thanksgiving Placemat
I've precut some pieces of construction paper and now I'm going to start weaving the pieces into the loom. I am going to start with the yellow strip and place it under the first one, over the second one, under the third, over the fourth under the fifth and so on.And where I went under, now I will go over. Now going back to yellow we’re going to go once again under the first one and then over the second one.
You might want to help little ones, weaving. It might be easier to lift up the strips and then put the pieces down if you lift up alternately. Then you can just lay a piece down and bring them down that way. That might be easier for younger ones.
Paint a Turkey on the Craft
So now were done weaving our placemat, and were moving on to the hand turkey portion. So what you're going to want to do is make sure its a washable paint uh like latex or acrylic paints and then get a large paint brush and basically just paint onto the hand.Now you want to place some pressure on each finger. Now when you pull up you want to make sure to pull up pretty evenly so that it doesn’t move your loom around. Now you're going to be adding the feathers to the turkey.
You just want to do one swipe in between each finger of each color that you'd like. Now, we want to move onto the turkey's beak and eyes. I actually use the other half of the paintbrush in order to make the turkey's eye because it makes a perfect circle. Now you can use more brown to make the pupil. And now we go back to yellow to make the beak. The last thing our turkey needs is a pair of feet.
Customize Your Thanksgiving Craft
So, now we have our turkey and if you'd like you can write on each flap and fringe piece things that you're thankful for this holiday season. The last thing you want to do is glue down the fringe with the glue stick this will make sure that your placemat will stay in one piece.And now you have a beautiful turkey thanksgiving placemat. Thank you for watching, to learn more visit us on the Web at About.com.
About videos are made available on an "as is" basis, subject to the User Agreement.