Katrina’s Thankful Tree

There are lots of ideas out there on Thankful Trees. This is my take on it. There are two criteria for my family for activities like this that have a life lesson. One is that it has to be quick because my boys just won’t sit for something that is long and drawn out. Two, it has to be something that is easy to fit into our daily routine and not take a lot of time or energy to do. We have a hard enough time getting our Autistic son to sit down to do homework or anything that he perceives as “work.” I think (time will tell) that I have come up with something that will work for us.

What I used to make my thankful tree:

12x12 inch scrapbook paper for the background.

12x12 inch dark brown scrapbook paper for the tree

Poster board

Rub on letters

Silk leaves I purchased from the 99 cent only store

Mod Podge

Loctite Fun Tak Mounting Putty (to hold the leaves in place)

Sharpie pen to write on the leaves

12x12 picture frame that normally holds a collage of pictures my son took. (The collage and glass are behind my thankful tree)

I used a white colored pencil to sketch my tree on the back of the brown paper. When I was happy with my sketch, I cut it out.

I used mod Podge to glue the background paper to the poster board to help keep the paper from curling.

I then used Mod Podge to glue the tree onto the background paper. I used criss cross brush strokes so that it has a “painted” look when it’s dry. Kind of like when you look at an oil painting on canvas.

After the Mod Podge dried I placed my rub on letters on to the background paper. I used more Mod Podge to make sure the letters are protected.

I used mounting putty (the kind you use for posters that won’t mark the wall) to stick the leaves on my tree.

How we will use it:

Each day in November we will each take a leaf off the top of the tree and write what we are thankful for using only 1 or 2 words. We will then stick the leaves on the ground under the tree. By removing the leaves off the tree we are experiencing the passage of fall. By the time December 1st comes around all our leaves will have “fallen” off our tree and filled the “ground” with all that we are thankful for. Winter will be here. Since this hangs on the wall near our dinner table we will do this when we sit down for dinner.

We can reuse the background next year and simply add new silk leaves or cut some out of paper.

One idea of what to do with the leaves we use this year could be to scrapbook them on a two page layout with 4 smaller trees, one for each person in the family. Each tree would be labeled with our names and our Thankful leaves will go onto our trees. This way we can look back years from now and see what we were thankful for.

Katrina

I am thankful to my Sisters-in-law for inviting me to join them in making this blog. It has been so much fun. I am also thankful to all our friends who stop by every day to check out the things we have made and leave us a little note.

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