Gratitude Tree

I'm always looking for way to make Thanksgiving meaningful.  Gratitude is a wonderful thing to have and I want my boys to learn how important it is.  I know some families who do this already but this year I decided to give the Gratitude tree a try.  My curriculum for Jonathan uses The Friend as a resource and the story I had him read was about making a Gratitude Tree and so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity.

Jonathan and I went to the craft store to see what we could find.  November was already half over but we found a roll of paper that had a wood panel texture to it.  I figured that was close enough.  We also managed to find a small package of silk leaves.  I knew it wouldn't last the whole month but there were enough to tide us over until the leaf paper punch arrived in the mail.  I wasn't about to start cutting them out by hand.

There weren't a ton of leaves on it since we started halfway through November, plus some days I just forgot, but we did pretty well.  We ended up with more than what is in the picture.  The boys did a good job.  Because we had to come up with something new everyday, they had to start thinking harder about their blessings.  It was a good reminder.  I helped Brigham come up with things he's thankful for and he did a pretty good job coming up with things.  One thing I loved that he was thankful for were his slippers.  He even mentioned it twice because we forgot he had already said that before.

We will definitely do it again next year.  I have a whole roll of wood panel paper that I need to use up.