Creating a Family Thankful Tree

Over the years I’ve tried different ways to spend this time of year developing an appreciation for all we have to be thankful for.

We’ve created thankful turkeys and spent a lot of time talking about what we’re each individually thankful for but this year I’ve been really working on instilling a feeling of “family” and reinforce the fact that we’re all a team and need to work together to achieve our individual and cumulative goals.

So this year, I decided to do a Thankful Tree. It’s a place where we can all share what we are thankful for and put them all together in one place and share our thankfulness.

We’re going to each be adding one leaf to our Thankful Tree each night until Thanksgiving of all the things we’re thankful for and while it seems a little bare right now, I know in another week it will be filled with colorful leaves and reminders of all we have.

I decided to hang it on the door to our backyard for a few reasons. We spend a lot of time outside, especially now that the weather has begun to cool down and so we’ll see it every time we go in and out. It’s also where we spend most of our inside time, in the family room and by the kitchen so we’ll see it often even when we’re inside.

My goal for our Thankful Tree is to not only to take time to think about and recognize what have to be thankful for but also to remember those things past when we initially write them down.

How to make a Thankful Tree:

You’ll need

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• Brown Butcher Paper
• Fall colored construction paper or scrapbooking paper
• Scissors
• Clear Tape
• Dark Marker

Cut a piece of butcher paper the size you want your finished tree to be.

Draw a rough outline of a tree with bare branches and cut the tree out (my girls help draw the branches but I had to adjust when cutting as their lines were mostly squatty and they didn’t understand why the lines needed to be thick for cutting out.)

Cut out leaf shapes from yellow, red, orange and brown construction or scrapbook paper.

Tape the tree in a place where you’ll see it often.

Each day, ask each family member what s/he is thankful for and write each answer on a leaf and stick it on the tree.

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