Paint + homemade paintbrushes + stencils + 2 kids = FUN! and some lovely Thanksgiving stencil painting art!

Because painting is so much fun, I decided to focus our Thanksgiving craft on using some simple stencils. I drew some simple designs, a pumpkin, two leaf shapes and a turkey of course. So, ready to have fun? Here’s how you can repeat this Thanksgiving stencil painting activity with your own little ones.

1. Make Stencils

Get your FREE PRINTABLE HERE: thanksgiving-stencil-painting-stencils

Once you’ve printed your stencils, I recommend using cardstock, cut them out. Here, you want the outline to be complete, so punch a hole with the scissors in each shape and cut around. You can use some extra pieces of paper to section off the stencils and avoid getting paint outside the stencil lines if you want. We kept things low-key and baby girl went a bit more freestyle in the end!

2. Make Paintbrushes

I made some fun paintbrushes using a clothespin. I used felt, which worked out great for dabbing, paper and some rosemary from our garden. The rosemary smelled great, but the kids preferred the felt paintbrush over the other two. It was fun to see how each one worked though. You can use whatever you have around. Traditional paintbrushes are also fine.

3. Get Painting!

I gave my kids brown cardstock to paint on. We used yellow and red paint placed in a yogurt cup. They did the mixing themselves and enjoyed seeing splashes of yellow and red in the paint. It was a great way to see how orange is made!

I decided to introduce my baby girl (14 months) to painting when Peanut took a nap. This usually happens the her way around…baby girl takes a nap and Peanut and I get to crafting, but this time, Peanut was exhausted from running around all morning and decided to take a break. It was a great opportunity to focus on special one on one time with baby girl. I put an old shirt on her, and we got busy. She loved it! She tried eating it once or twice, but then focused on getting paint on the paper. It was great fine motor practice and she got really good at sticking the paintbrush in the yogurt cup.

Then, when Peanut woke up, the whole family got involved and we did some more painting. Peanut was a bit more into the stencils. He liked to pick out the shape and then dab all of the corners so it would come out nicely. He is also already an expert at pouring and mixing his own paint.

When we were done, I hung their artwork up on our clothespin ribbon gallery. Our Thanksgiving stencil painting adventure was a success! I think it looks pretty festive and the kids really enjoyed it.

Happy painting!

Need more thanksgiving crafts? Check out my top 5 favorite Thanksgiving crafts here.