"Toast & Sandwiches" Thankful Tree

I saw this idea on Pinterest quite awhile ago and loved it so much that I pinned it in my Fall/Harvest/Thanksgiving board hoping I would remember to come back to it!
(Check out the original blogger's idea here)

The Thankful Tree

First I took a roll of $1.00 brown shipping paper from the Dollar Tree and drew out a free-hand tree. I'm not usually a very good free-hander, but I figured I could handle a tree. =)

Then I had to find a wall that it would work on and stuck it up with some green super sticky masking tape.

Next I took some glittery foam Fall leaf cut-outs that I had in the craft box from the $1 bin at Target last year and traced them onto some construction paper.

I'm now in the process of cutting out millions of little leaves.... yay. I think it probably would have been easier to go to Michael's and buy some paper leaves... but oh, well. I'm eventually going to pile them at the bottom of the tree like the original blogger, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm also going to fill in with a few of the glittery ones around the bottom for some extra color and sparkle. =)

Lastly, each morning when we get up I asked him what he's thankful for today. When he finally decides on something, I write it on a leaf with a black Sharpie and let him stick it to the tree wherever he wants.

I have to say, this has been a great exercise so far for Malachi. It's been hard for him to come up with things to say he's thankful for without prompting. I'm trying NOT to prompt him and the first things he came up with are the things he says he's thankful to when he says his bedtime prayers. It's either going to get harder as the month goes on because he runs out of things or easier because he figures out what he's supposed to do... we'll see.

So far we have:

Day 1: Toys

Day 2: Jesus

Day 3: Mommy & Daddy

Day 4: Grandma & Papa

Day 5: Toast & Sandwiches

Day 5 makes me laugh. He LOVES what he calls "toast," which is actually just un-toasted bread with peanut butter and honey or jam on it. It figures it would make it up there in the Top 5.

I am also noticing that he is placing each new leaf on a different branch of the tree. I'm not sure what he's going to do when he realizes he's run out of branches... start over or figure he's done.

Back to cutting leaves for me!