Creative Family Fun

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Thanksgiving Activities for Kids

Get Crafty: Gratitude Leaves

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This year, a lot of our Thanksgiving activities have centered around gratitude.

We’ve been practicing gratitude at the table as well as celebrating all the things, big or small, that we are thankful for in our everyday life.

As a way to illustrate all that we are thankful for, we made these simple gratitude trees.

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Supplies Needed:

Orange, yellow & brown construction paper
Leaf template
Empty paper towel tube
Brown paint
Pipe cleaners
Tape

Using your leaf templates, cut several different leaves from the construction paper. We made nine leaves.

While you’re cutting out your leaves, you’ll also want to prep your cardboard tube by painting it brown.

Once your leaves are ready, it’s time to start talking gratitude. What are you grateful  for?

We included the big things like family, God, and sisters. We also included such things as sunshine, trees, and flowers.

There is no wrong answer! Write one thing you’re grateful for on each leaf.

Once the paint is dry, punch one hole for each leaf in your cardboard tube. I used a tiny screwdriver to punch my holes. I also put all the holes in the top third of the tube to mimic a tree.

Using your pipe cleaners, which have been cut in half, lace them through the holes from one side to the other.

You should have one end of each pipe cleaner half on each side of the tube. By lacing them through the holes, you won’t need glue to hold them in place.

The final step is to tape a leaf onto each pipe cleaner.

Now you have a fun and easy gratitude tree to use as a reminder for all the things you are thankful for.

What are some of the different ways you’ve taught your kids about gratitude?

Thankful Trees

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Our Fall Bucket List would not be complete this year without making Thankful Trees. When thinking about this project, I decided I wanted it to be more about thankfulness than about the artwork.

I drew simple tree shapes on brown construction paper, then cut out a bunch of construction paper leaves.

Then, armed with the leaves and my trusted black Sharpie, I gathered the girls to talk about thankfulness.

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We read the book Thanksgiving Is for Giving Thanks by Margaret Sutherland. This is a very sweet book that gives the kids a wonderful and very simply stated introduction to thankfulness.

After reading the book, we talked about what we were thankful for. Lizzie was able to give me quite a good list.

I recorded all the things they were thankful for on the leaves, then we went to the table and started gluing.

We talked a bit more about thankfulness while the girls used their glue sticks.

Lizzie’s list: food, friends, flowers, Mommy, my kitchen (i.e. her play kitchen), sister, Daddy, books, and ice cream (aren’t we all).

AJ’s list as dictated to my by Lizzie: sister, books, Charlie (our dog), milk, Mommy, food, Lucy (our cat), her baby doll, and Daddy.

What are you thankful for?

Hand Print Turkey Cards

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One the items on our Fall Bucket List that we hadn’t completed yet was “make hand print turkeys.” Since Thanksgiving is coming up soon, it was time to do them.

This craft was much more adult-led than the other projects we’ve been doing, but the girls enjoyed it nonetheless.

The first item of business, was painting the girls’ hands. Make sure you use washable paint! I did each girl one at a time since I had nightmares of colorful hand prints all over my walls.

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Once the hands were painted, we pressed them on the paper. We were turning these into cards, so I had already pre-cut and pre-folded the paper.

Once they were dry, we added beaks, eyes, legs, and grass.

The cards are two folded sheets of paper nestled inside each other – four pages total.  The turkeys got progressively small with the first being Lizzie’s, the second AJ’s, and the third was Lizzie’s thumbprint for the body and AJ’s fingerprints for the feathers.

They’re going in the mail soon, so that hopefully the recipients get them before Thanksgiving!

What Thanksgiving projects have you been doing lately?

Thanksgiving Craft Roundup

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I’ve been gathering ideas for Thanksgiving crafts for the last couple of weeks and have found so many good ones.

Since I know I’m not the only one looking for inspiration at this time of year, I thought I’d share some of my favorites.

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The Chocolate Muffin Tree shows you how to make beautiful coffee filter turkey cards.

Kitchen Counter Chronicles shares adorable hand print turkey napkin rings.

The thankful tree from JDaniel4’s Mom is a wonderful craft for teaching about gratitude.

Practice a little bit of origami and make these cute turkeys from Let’s Explore.

Little Wonders’ Days made turkeys using rubbings from homemade feather rubbing plates.

My girls would have fun playing with these rockin’ turkeys from Itsy Bitsy Learners.

Classified: Mom shows you how to make these fun 3-D textured turkeys.

Laugh, Paint, Create shares these colorful collage turkeys.

Small Types shows you how to make a simple and very beautiful thankful log. It would make a wonderful keepsake!

Little Family Fun has another great way to show thankfulness with this gratitude turkey.

Do you have any Thanksgiving ideas you want to share?

In November: Book and Craft

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The minute I saw the book, In November by Cynthia Rylant, I knew it needed a great craft project to go along with it.

The book is beautifully illustrated accompanied by a very poetic text  about the different things that happen in November. We heard about what the trees, animals and even families do in November.

After we finished the book, it was crafting time!

I set out our pressed leaves that we still had from our leaf rubbing garland, paper, and paint. We were going to try some leaf stamping.

I showed the girls how to paint the leaf then turn it upside down and press it on their paper. They were ready to go!

AJ preferred the stamp and press portion of the craft, so I did the leaf painting for her.

Lizzie was able to complete the whole project herself.

We painted, stamped and pressed until we had four pieces of paper covered.

When they were done stamping, they decided to paint with the brushes on their paper as well.

While we were working, we talked about November. We talked about the weather, animals and holidays.

I asked “What happens in November?” and collected their answers.

Once the paint was dry, I took out my Sharpie and wrote their answers on the artwork. I covered them in contact paper and we had four place mats.

In November…
It’s a little bit cold and a little bit warm
We look forward to Thanksgiving
The geese are flying
The leaves are red, yellow and orange and falling to the ground
We eat pumpkin pie
We feed the birds
It’s very windy
We see a lot of orange
We paint a lot

How are you celebrating November?