Thanksgiving Day Turkey Craft

Looking for a fun Thanksgiving day craft??  This simple craft is easy and fun!  Collect pine cones outside, purchase googly eyes, an orange foam sheet, feathers, and tacky glue.  I Started by hot gluing the eyes and beak to the pine cone.  Later my toddler added the feathers with tacky glue!  These would make a fun Thanksgiving day center piece for your kids table or a fun craft to complete on thanksgiving day!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thankful Tree 2013

We started our thankful tree last week and have been adding thankful leaves to it each day!  This year we printed off pictures of things we were thankful for, glued them on paper leaves, then added them to our tree!  If you haven't made a thankful tree this year you still have time!!  You may also want to make it just for thanksgiving day and add leaves to it throughout that day!

How to make your thankful tree...
1.  Collect sticks outside
2. Arrange them into a vase
3. Di-cut leaves, make your own leaves out of construction paper, or print off clip-art leaves from the computer
4. Write, draw, or place pictures of items and people you are thankful for onto the leaves
5. Add the thankful leaves with tape to your tree!

Last year when we were done with our tree we carefully took the leaves off and glued them to a blank book (see below).  We decorated the front cover with a turkey hand-print and added the title "Thankful Tree 2012."  We also saved our Thanksgiving cards we received and placed them in the back of the book.  It was fun to take it out this year to look through! 

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thankful Tree 2012

Thanks to a great post from "Living and Learning at Home" I was inspired to put together a last minute thankful tree!  We set up our tree the week of Thanksgiving and each day my husband and I have been adding "leaves of thanks" to our tree!  My 18 month old daughter is also participating by drawing on a leaf.  While she is drawing I generate words of things she might be thankful for.  Although she can't express her thanks in language yet it is still great for her oral language to hear the word thankful!! After she is done drawing I write for her something she may be thankful for.  Watching her mama write begins to develop the connection between spoken and written words.  It is an excellent idea for your child to see you write regularly. See her leaf below...

How I Made our Thankful Tree...

1. Collected sticks and twigs with my daughter at her grandma and papa's house (great outdoor experience for her)

2. Trimmed sticks to be arranged in a vase

3. Die-Cut fall leaves in three colors (red, yellow, and orange)

4. Set up a bowl with blank leaves, tape, and marker

5. Once a leaf is finished I tape the paper stem to a branch

6. Any Thanksgiving cards our family received we placed at the base of the tree

Next year I plan to have our thankful tree set up much earlier!  I also would like to write Thanksgiving Bible verses on the leaves and/or verses that describe our spiritual blessings.  Happy Thanksgiving!  May you delight and be thankful for all your blessings!