The Thanksgiving Tree: Showing Gratitude

Last year I made a Halloween Tree for my house, but I loved it so much that I hated to take it down once Halloween was over. So I have tried to find ways to incorporate it into other holidays. This year I have decided to turn it into our Thanksgiving tree.

In the past I just did a quick sketch of a tree on craft paper, cut it out, and taped it to the wall. We then wrote down what we were grateful for every day on a leaf and taped it on the tree. It was fun, but I thought it would be even cooler to use a real tree branch and it will be lots easier because I already have it! I have to admit that my attempts at cutting a giant tree out of craft paper last year were less than perfect.

Because the tree is smaller I just made the leaves smaller this year and then hung them by running a piece of string through the top of the leaf. We’ve been writing on both sides of the leaves so that I don’t have to cut so many out.

I didn’t have any Fall colored paper lying around and I hate to buy craft supplies unless I have to. So I pulled out my watercolors and let my daughter paint the leaves before I cut them out. They ended up turning out way better than scrapbook paper. The watercolors were perfect at replicating the color variations of actual Fall leaves. She also had a BLAST. She keeps asking me to let her paint more leaves!

We have made our son write his own blessings on the leaves this year and although it might seem sweet that he listed me as one of his very first blessings, the reality is that he has just been trying to come up with blessings that are easy to write. So far he has come up with God, Mom, and Dad. We are wondering when he is going to run out of short word blessings!

I am so excited to see what the tree looks like by Thanksgiving with the branches absolutely crammed with leaves!

Looking for more ways to teach your children about Thanksgiving? Here are a few great books!