Make: Thankful Trees

This great idea was shared by BEV. You can visit her regularly at her blog, Sweet Tea and Sass.


Thankful Trees
Here’s a fun, simple project to do with your kids, or grandkids. 
Materials needed: 
A sheet from a large drawing pad
Markers
An egg carton
Several tubes of finger paint
Package of sticky googly eyes. 
My grandsons went with brown for the trunk of the tree, but you might want to let your child use his imagination. Imagination is fun! 
Have them trace their entire arm, or help them if they’re a bit too young, opening their fingers up at the top of the ‘tree’. The arm will form the trunk and the branches will be formed by the fingers reaching up and out. 


Once the trunk and limbs are drawn, they can dip their finger(s) into the finger paint, making ‘leaves’ on the trees. We used a lot of fun colors for this part, and layered the leaves on top of each other. We even added some that had fallen on the ground. 
When the leaves have dried, the kids can stick a pair of googly eyes on each leaf, two for each member of their family, or even for other things they might be thankful for. Grayson added some of the characters from Star Wars, and one for his great-grandmother, who is in heaven. Caiden added family pets, and friends. I helped Grayson with some labeling of the leaves because he’s just learning to read and write. 


The front of many refrigerators are not magnetic these days, but a piece of tape will easily remedy that.  
The googly eyes, added to the boys’ foreheads, are optional but they sure had fun wearing them the rest of the day, as we went out to lunch and ran errands

6 comments:

Sarah said...

This was a perfect memento for remembering the kids this year, and we'll definitely be doing it again next year! Thanks, Mom, for making this memory with the boys!!

Bev said...

It would have been precious anyway, but seeing them have such fun, going out in public with googly eyes stuck to their foreheads, made it priceless!

AnnG said...

Great idea!! May need to do that next week during our mini break from our normal school activities!

Michelle said...

Cute idea! I'm confused about what you need the egg carton for?

FunMom said...

P31, thanks for your comment! I believe that the egg carton is to use as a makeshift paint holder. I've done that before...keeps the colors separated. Works great, and makes for super easy clean up!

Bev said...

p31, so sorry for not including that. Leslie is right, they make a great paint cup holder, and are also good for separating things like beads, cookie toppings, etc. I make sure to keep a few on hand just for when little ones are here playing / creating with me!

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