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Happy November! I can’t believe we are in the month of November already. I feel like we were just talking about the start of fall and Halloween! But here we are, inching closer and closer to the busy holiday season.
It’s so easy this day and age to get wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays that we can forget the real meaning of each holiday. Retail stores put up Christmas displays before the Halloween treats are bought and we are bombarded with all the best holiday deals beginning November 1st.
I’m here to tell you to take a step back and truly ask yourself, “What’s the point?” What is the point of the holiday season? Why do we do the things we do? What is most important to us? What matters the most to us during the holiday season?
I honestly am really excited for Christmas movies on Hallmark, Christmas decorating, baking Christmas cookies and doing all the Christmas activities with my little ones, but I wanted to share something you can do with your family during the month of November. Something that reminds us all to stop and nurture an “attitude of gratitude” and take time to share about the people, places and things for which we are thankful.
I call it the Thanksgiving Tree or the Thankful Tree. Trees are not just for Christmas in our house anymore!
I know it’s only November 3rd and Halloween was a few days ago, but I really wanted to put the Christmas Tree up in our living room. To further persuade my husband, I came up with the idea for a Thanksgiving Tree. This way, we could enjoy the look of the tree, but tie it into the current season without skipping right to Christmas. It also helps my youngest get used to the tree so he doesn’t spend his days playing with the ornaments or the tree itself.
I planned to do some sort of activity around thankfulness with my preschooler and toddler this year. Every year I try to talk about being thankful and doing an activity where we write/display for what we are thankful, but haven’t been successful yet. But it’s important to me to teach my little ones to be thankful. This was the year I was going to do it!!
I was originally going to make a Thankful Turkey that I saw shared by Busy Toddler, but then my heart really wanted to put up the Christmas tree. So I decided a Thankful Tree would work!
Every day during the month of November, we are writing what we are thankful for on a leaf and hanging that leaf on our Thankful Tree.
If you want to engage your family in conversations surrounding thankfulness, be sure to check out my Thankful Leaves. It is a free set of leaves you can print, write on and hang on your very own Thankful Tree. These are the exact leaves we are using for our tree and I wanted to make them available to you 😊 I’m thankful you stopped by to read this post so enjoy your free Thankful Leaves by clicking on the image below.
My husband put the tree up and lights on after the kids went to bed while I cut out “ornaments” and leaves for the tree decorations. I used PowerPoint to create “ornaments” for the tree. I searched for Thanksgiving pictures, printed them on white cardstock and laminated to reuse for years to come. I did not laminate the leaves as we are writing on them each day. In addition to the Thanksgiving pictures, I printed some pumpkins, turkeys and cornucopias to hang on our Thanksgiving Tree.
When the kids woke up in the morning, we decorated the tree with the Thanksgiving pictures, pumpkins, turkeys and cornucopias. Then, I read a book about being thankful and I explained what we would be doing for the month of November. My preschooler helped me cut out feathers and glue together a Turkey Tree Topper and I think he is the cutest I’ve ever seen! I’ve been involving her a lot when it comes to making fall decorations for our home and she loves it! A fall tablecloth that wasn’t being used makes the perfect tree skirt. Our cat sure loves sitting under the tree, too!
My kids love having the tree up and it’s a wonderful way to display what we are thankful for, nurture an “attitude of gratitude” and transition our home from Halloween to Christmas. While our tree is up in November, it isn’t decorated for Christmas yet. We will spend time as a family decorating our tree for Christmas once Thanksgiving has come and gone. For now, I want to stop and think about being thankful for the things we have, people in our lives and places we’ve been. Be sure to click below to grab your free set of Thankful Leaves to start decorating your very own Thanksgiving Tree with your family 😊
