No , I don’t have my holidays confused I really do mean a Thanksgiving Tree. During the BloggyGiveaways.com quarterly carnival last week, (where I won here, here, and here! ) I found quite a few new blogs that I really enjoyed. One of those blogs is Impress Your Kids. It’s not about doing tricks or being the cool parent that impresses their kids - it’s about the impressions we make on our kids, and making sure they are the right ones! I’ve linked to it here but it can also be found in my blogroll over on the right hand side of the page here.

Well over at Impress Your Kids they are doing “Fall Impressions” which is a weekly series of activities, crafts, etc. to impress upon your kids the meaning of the season. Every Wednesday they will be posting their own activity and invites other bloggers to come up with something, post and link back to Impress Your Kids. With it being creative and crafty I jumped on board immediately. Not long after reading the post I had an idea of what I wanted to do and how Gabe ( age 8 ) could help. Before I delve into the Thanksgiving Tree here is the nifty neat-o button for Fall Impressions, click it to find out what Fall Impressions is all about:

I wanted to do something with a branch & leaves, then it came to me to make a tree! I grabbed an empty Progresso soup can from the recycle bin, sent Gabe out to find a couple different branches that have fallen in all this wind lately, and some rocks. Then Gabe & David (age 3) gathered several different sizes and types of leaves. Somehow it all turned into the Thanksgiving Tree! We even made our own plaster of paris (how cool is that?) to help hold it in place. It is still a work in progress as we have many more leaves to add but I want to add them as we lead up to Thanksgiving and become more aware of Giving Thanks. We’re also going to add some decoration to the fabric that’s covering the can - most likely buttons. I am really happy with how this came out and hope someone else enjoys it and is inspired by it! Without further ado, The Thanksgiving Tree:

Even though it looks sparse I love it. Oh and please ignore the boxes you see in the background, I am still unpacking. Since you won’t be able to make out everything on the leaves, here is what they say - in no particular order;

In Everything, Give Thanks!

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love endures forever. Psalms 136:1

thanksgiving - noun a day set apart for giving thanks to God

friends

Gabe is thankful for: Jesus my dad my mom grammy papa my dog my brother grandma

I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonders. Psalms 9:1

family

Karla is thankful for: God’s grace My Heavenly Father my loving husband my 2 crazy sons Parents who set a great example God’s provision

thanksgiving - noun the act of giving thanks; grateful acknowledgment of benefits or favors, especially to God

Gabe and I looked up the verses using the concordance in the back of the Bible (new thing for him) and looked up thanksgiving in the dictionary to help us understand it better. He helped a lot and is also quite proud of the end result. Next week I hope to do something outside our home to learn about giving and thankfulness. Gabe is a giver by nature (I admit it’s a passion of mine also) so I think we will have a blast figuring out just what to do next week!

ETA: I meant to do this before and forgot, here is a link to how I made the plaster of paris: How to make plaster of paris I used the flour method and added about 2T white glue for a little added stick since I was using it as a filler with the rocks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 8:15 pm and is filed under craft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.