Our “Thanks AND Giving Tree”

We’re very excited about our new “Thanks And Giving” Tree. I found this idea on one of my new favorite blogs, Impress Your Kids. We talked about the word, “Thanksgiving” and broke it down into two words…thanks and giving. Of course, we are spending this week and next talking about the First Thanksgiving, but I also want them to understand what it means for us today. To whom are we to give thanks? Why? How?

James 1:17 tells us that every good and perfect gift comes from the Lord. So, of course, we are to give thanks to God for everything. This thanks should prompt us to give to others in return and tell of all His kindnesses. I love the verse that Impress Your Kids used to sum this up:

Give thanks to the Lord. Worship Him. Tell the nations what He has done. 1 Chronicles 16:8

When the Lord blesses us, we should want to tell others. One of the best ways to share the good news of Christ is by GIVING.

I want to help my kids to understand this concept. So, I created a “Thanks AND Giving Tree” for us to do together the 10 days prior to Thanksgiving…and, hopefully, this will spur us toward giving throughout the year.

First, I printed off, colored and laminated a tree. Next, I used a die-cut machine to make 10 leaves with giving ideas written on each of them. After laminating the leaves, I put a velcro dot on the back of each leaf and on the tree. I also added dots to the bottom of the tree to have a place to put them as we take them off.

Each day, we take one leaf off of the tree. As we take the leaf off, we say something that we are thankful for. Then, we read the giving idea for the day and place the leaf at the bottom of the tree.

This week got off to a slow start because of a stomach bug in our house. But, we were finally able to complete our first giving task…Shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child!

Each child enjoyed filling up a shoebox (small plastic container) for a boy/girl that was his/her age. When we got home, they filled out the downloadable All About Me pages that were provided by Operation Christmas Child. We also plan on tracking our box online. It would be lots of fun to receive a letter back from at least one of the children! Afterwards, we spent time as a family praying for both the children that would receive boxes from our family.

What a blessing it was to share the love of Christ as a family to children we will never meet. I’m looking forward to the rest of our “giving” leaves this week and next. I’m also hoping to make this a habit of our family. Our Family For His Glory has some wonderful ideas for family service projects. It would be great if we could find time each month to serve as a family!

Thanksgiving Tea Party

We are in the middle of our Thanksgiving Unit right now. I haven't had time to blog about it, and I probably won't until after Thanksgiving. So, for this week, I decided to repost Our Thanksgiving Tea Party from last year.

We had a great time at our tea party this morning. Here are some pictures...

Waiting for her friends to arrive.


Yes, she's wearing jewelry with the pilgrim outfit. She wanted to be a pilgrim princess. I did explain to her that most likely the pilgrim's didn't wear jewelry, but it wasn't a battle worth fighting.

Cornucopia


My cute little Indian


Playing Thanksgiving Bingo


More Bingo


Making Thanksgiving Cards


Tea Time


Sipping


The whole crew

Lexy had such a good time planning for and having the tea party. We'll have to consider making this a new Thanksgiving tradition.

Here are pictures and activities from our Thanksgiving Unit 2009.

Thanksgiving Unit/Tea Party

This week we took a break from our normal routine and focused on Thanksgiving. Much of our week was spent planning for our Thanksgiving Tea Party that we will be having tomorrow. Lexy is VERY excited! I'll post pictures of the actual event after it happens. Here is a little of what we did this week:

Thanksgiving Books:

We read several different books about Thanksgiving and talked about them.

1. Thanksgiving Day by Gail Gibbons - This was probably my favorite. It explained the history of Thanksgiving in a way that a preschooler could understand. Lexy was able to recall back: 1. why the pilgrims came to America 2. the name of the boat that they traveled on 3. what happened on the boat 4. the trouble that they had once they got to the new land 5. who came to help them 6. and how they celebrated the harvest that God had blessed them with.

2. Oh, What a Thanksgiving! by Steven Kroll

3. Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Marker

4. The First Thanksgiving (forgot to write the author down before returning it to the library...oops)

5. The Littlest Pilgrim by Brandi Dougherty

6. My Thankyou Book

Bible:

Instead of focusing on a particular Bible story this week, we spent time talking about ways that God has blessed us. We read from My Thankyou Book.

Building a Log Cabin: Lexy tried to copy the picture of the cabins that she saw in one of the books that the Pilgrims lived in. She even added "hay" to the roof. Cute. It was very difficult to build with Josiah's only goal being to destruct!

Give it back!


The finished product before "Tornado" swept through


Working on Patterns

AB and AABB patterns


Random Pictures from our week:

Making Pilgrim and Indian paper dolls


Lexy's pilgrim outfit for the tea party. Made by my aunt


LetterRoads


Beginning Sounds Soup


Fine Motor Skills :)


Visual Discrimination


Not sure why she wrote her name backwards???


Playing with chalk

We created an elevator using our laundry room. I saw this on another Preschool Corner post, but I forget which one.

Thanksgiving Tea Party Plans:

Lexy has worked hard helping get ready for the party. Here is what we have planned.

1. Make Thanksgiving Cards

2. Play Thanksgiving bingo

3. Play

4. Tea party - serve "green tea" ( kiwi juice drink), pb and j sandwiches cut in turkey shapes, pretzels

5. Decorate sugar cookies shaped like turkeys and pumpkins

6. Thanksgiving songs/fingerplays...The Turkey Strut!

7. Give Gift Bags : minature tea sets from the dollar stor and a file folder of Thanksgiving activities: pilgrim and indian paper dolls, color by number Thanksgiving sheet, Turkey craft, Thanksgiving Memory game

Come back tomorrow to see pictures of our Thanksgiving Tea Party in action! Head over to the Preschool Corner to see what other moms are doing with their Preschoolers!

A Thanksgiving Tea Party (Part 1)

I've decided to have a little Thanksgiving Tea Party for Lexy (I've decided to just start calling them by their real names) and a few of her friends. Since she doesn't go to preschool, she doesn't do all the fun little parties. However, there was no reason why we couldn't host our own parties every now and then. Lexy loves "crafty stuff." So, she made her own invitations to give to her friends. The details of the party are not all planned out. We do plan to have the girls dress like pilgrims or indians. I know that technically they had a feast, not a tea, but a tea will be cuter and less expensive. I'll post pictures and more details of what we did after the party, but if anyone has any cute ideas of what can be done at a preschool Thanksgiving Tea be sure to let me know!

Here's Lexy working on her invitations...I've passed on my bad habit of spreading out all over the floor when I'm working on something.

punching out decorations for her invitations


she really likes to use those little scrapbook punches



still punching


The invitations turned out cute. I didn't take a final picture of them when they were finished. I'll have to take one before we send them out.