Gotta Hand It To You, Dad! Gift

It's almost summer-vacation for us preschool teachers.  Graduation was Thursday.  Just one more week of school (mostly fun stuff) and then, ... onto VBS preparation.

But before then, we need to squeeze in our Father's Day gifts.  We do a Mother's Day gift each year (I'll show that soon... sorry, should've posted that a month ago!), and to be fair, we send them home with Father's Day gifts on the last day of school, too.  Just for fun.

Here's what we did.

You'll need:

Package of Shrinky Dink paper (not patterned... just plain paper)

Sharpie

Colored pencils

Scissors

Oven

Keychain ring/clip

First, trace the child's hand onto the Shrinky Dink paper.  Be sure to do it on the rough side.  We used a regular pencil lightly, so that it wouldn't show up later.  We (the teachers) cut out the handprints. 

I had the kids write their names in marker onto a thin sheet of paper.  Then I flipped the paper over, so that you could see it backwards through the paper.  

I then traced the backwards name with a Sharpie onto the rough side.  (This is so that the name shows correctly the right way while viewing the shiny side later.)  Then, be sure to punch a hole at the bottom of the hand.  I punched four in a clover-shape, just to make sure that it was big enough to get a keychain ring through later.

Here is what it looks like shiny-side-up before coloring.

Then, we had the kids color the hands with colored pencils before baking.  I baked at 375 for about 2-3 minutes (till the curling was done and the shrunken hand was flat again).

Here's a before and after shot.

Then, add the keychain ring (ours had clips on them, too.) 

Too cute!  Think Dad'll just LOVE these?