Monday, November 23, 2009

Thankful Tree

One afternoon last week, the kids made Thankful Trees. I thought it was such a sweet idea that I'd post it here. I cut out leaves in fall-ish colors and gave the kids a big sheet of white paper. They made a trunk with brown marker, then told me, one at a time, things for which they were thankful. After I'd write down the idea, we'd put a little glue on the back and add the leaf to their tree. Turns out they had a lot of things to be thankful for, and I had to cut extra leaves (twice). But it was great to see their big and little thankful thoughts. It's only Monday--certainly not too late for you to make your own thankful trees. Yes, neighbor across the street, we're all still on Thanksgiving around here, so keep your lights to a minimum. Sheesh.



A few notes: About half of M's leaves are face down. Although I was, selfishly, wanting to be able to see every one of his ideas and therefore resistant at first, I realized that it was his tree and his thoughts. So some of them are face down, but maybe all the more thoughtful for not being shared. Also, some of the leaves are blue, which is not, to my knowledge, a fall-ish color of leaf. I don't actually think it's a leaf color at all. But the kids were sure that their trees needed blue leaves on one of the extra cuts, and I figured why not. And by the time that M said he was now making a Christmas Thankful tree--which is exactly what it ended up looking like--I'd all but let go of the project. There are worse things than being independent.

1 comment:

Austen said...

What an awesome Thanksgiving craft! I also have a fantastically four-year-old son and he will love this. Thank you!

-Austen