One of our family principles is: gratitude is the best attitude. We practice being grateful all year, but November is like our high holiday of gratitude. Thanksgiving is our beginning and end. It’s when we reflect on a year’s worth of blessings as well as think ahead to all the ways we can share our gratitude with others. So, like many people do advent calendars to countdown to Christmas, we countdown to Thanksgiving. It’s different each year. This one is an oldie but goodie.
You will need:
- brown paper – we used paper bags from the grocery store
- a leaf template – we googled that
- construction paper in green, yellow, orange and red
- tape or sticky tack
- pencils or markers or crayons
Directions:
- Decide how long you want your countdown to be – the whole month of November may feel overwhelming.
- Make the tree trunk and branches (you don’t have to be Picasso, this is process over product). Consider making it a kid friendly height.
- Cut out 2 sets of leaves, one set of green and one set of autumn colors. You will need enough leaves for each child and each day in both sets.
- Attach the green leaves to the tree.
- Explain it to your family.
Each day on an autumn colored leaf you will write down something for which you are grateful. Then you will take down a green leaf and replace it with the autumn colored leaf. As we get closer to Thanksgiving there will be less green and more autumn colored leaves. When all the leaves have changed it will be Thanksgiving Day.
*If you skip a day or double up on a day just adjust the number accordingly.
When you’re done, you can make a little Thanksgiving scrapbook with the autumn leaves and pictures from Thanksgiving.
Be sure to join our Facebook event The Gratitude Project this month.