Making a Thankful Tree and Hawaiian Leis

We started our morning getting caught up on a project I wanted to start November 1st but totally forgot about.  

Every year for the month of November I write on my Facebook page one thing I'm thankful for each day.   During this time of Thanksgiving it's the perfect time of year to remember everything that we have been blessed with in our family and it's something I really want the boys to start focusing on too. 

This year we made a thankful tree.  I drew a tree and cut out a bunch of paper leaves in a rainbow of fall colors.  Each day they will write one thing they are thankful for on a leaf and we'll put it in our tree.  



By Thanksgiving we'll have a nice, big, full tree (I realize by Thanksgiving the real trees will be bare but think a pile of leaves would just look silly).  

For today each boy had to write up 5 things they were thankful for.  This was pretty easy for them and I didn't hear too much complaining, mostly just from Evan who was forced to write his own words today as I helped him spell.  

I was so proud of how easily they came up with what they are thankful for and some of them were just wonderful.  

Ian, as the oldest, tended to have the most to say; he was thankful for food so he wouldn't pass out if he couldn't eat,  he was thankful for vehicles because he wouldn't want to walk all the time, and my personal favorite: he was thankful for our house because he wouldn't enjoy living in a church, a car, or a cave!  

The other two boys focused on people like mom, dad, and toys like video games. 


To further our Hawaii study, today we put aside our usual state worksheets and made paper leis. 

It's really quite easy,  we took a length of yarn, cut up some plastic drinking straws, and I used some  punches I have to punch out paper flowers.with a hole in the center. 

We made a knot in the end of our yarn, threaded on a paper flower, a piece of straw and then alternated between the two.  They loved it and I have to say I loved how they came out.


It was such a fun start to our day and after trying to plan a few activity and lesson ideas for the rest of the week all by themselves they asked if I could go back to planning things for them to do. 

Of course I agreed and encouraged them, as always to play, get busy, and help me find fun things to do and to learn about.  

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 5, 2012 at 5:51 PM

    all's well that ends well! It IS HARD! Hard staying on track, easy to get caught in a funk or boring routine too... I guess it's forever a changing cycle and sometimes we miss the ques or seeing whats in front of us. I know I need to focus more on being a mom and not always rushing around and looking up activities and missing ones that are happening or could be happening behind me....

    ReplyDelete

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