Kate and I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving by thinking of things we are grateful for all month long.  And to write these things down, we’re posting them on our “Thanksgiving Tree” on our pantry door.

We took a few pieces of newspaper and taped them together on the back, then drew a large tree trunk and some branches with crayons.  Then we drew some different kinds of leaves on another piece of newspaper, cut them out as stencils, and traced and cut many more out of yellow, orange, and red construction paper.

We’ve chosen to write one thing we are thankful for per leaf and also to sign our names to each leaf so we know who wrote which thing.  I tried to let Kate choose as much of the craft as possible so that she would have ownership in it all.  She was so excited to tape her first leaf to the tree and couldn’t wait to have brother and sister home so they could ‘write’ one, too.

So far, we have about a dozen leaves on our tree ranging from being thankful for ‘our family’ all the way to being thankful for ‘my Groovy Doll’.  :)  She’s loving adding to it and I love that it’s perpetuating an attitude of gratefulness during this Thanksgiving season.

So, what Thanksgiving traditions do you and your family celebrate?

Makes me wonder what other gorgeous pictures she could get by purposefully blurring the image…

I’m not sure if Charlotte Mason would consider photography a ‘handicraft’, but I’m thinking that in this day and age it’s most definitely an art form!  And one that I want to encourage in my artist-of-a-daughter, too.