Giving Trees {A Simple Kids Craft for Thanksgiving!}

With Thanksgiving approaching, there are many beautiful crafts and activities to do to show our thanks.  But along with giving thanks for all that we have, why not also do an activity about giving to others?  "Giving Trees" are a wonderful way for little ones to think of ways to serve others this Fall as as Thanksgiving draws closer.  Inspired by the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, along with wanting a craft to celebrate the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary (November 17th), I came up with the idea of making a giving tree.  The base is made from a paper lunch bag, and on the leaves are written ways to give to others.  Simple and sweet!

One of my favorite children's stories!

The trees are very easy to make, and you only need a few basic supplies:

Supplies:

--a brown paper lunch bag (I used the larger size)

--scissors

--autumn colored cardstock, cut into leaf shapes

--a hole punch

Instructions:

1) Open your brown paper lunch bag and set it on the table. 

2)  Grab your bag around the center and twist in one direction, while keeping the bottom of bag (your tree base) pressed firmly on the table.  While twisting center of bag, be sure the base will stand upright.  If you wish, you may tuck the corners of the bag so they are not visible, making it look round, instead of rectangular.

3) Fan open the top of your bag and make about 8 vertical slits with your scissors, down toward the center of your "tree trunk". These strips will become your tree branches.  They should be approx. one inch wide and 4 inches long (this craft is very forgiving so don't stress over counting and measuring!)

4) Scrunch each strip with your hands, twisting tightly in any one direction to form your tree branches.  You may wish to shape them by giving them a bit of a curve, like a real tree branch.  This is the fun part!

5)  Once all of your branches are formed, be sure to twist the tips of each branch very tightly, so that your paper leaves will be able to slide onto the branches easily.

6)  Cut some simple fall leaf shapes from your cardstock.  Punch a hole in the top of each leaf.

7)  Write various ways to give to others on each leaf.

8)  Marvel at the simple beauty of your Giving Tree...and then get givin'! :)

Here's a quick at-a-glance reference of each step:

That's all!  Easy, right?  They look really pretty placed in a group together (like a forest!), and would make a beautiful centerpiece for a kid's table on Thanksgiving.  

And, of course, you must read The Giving Tree together, to make this activity complete. :)  And, for my Catholic friends, if you wish to incorporate this activity with St. Elizabeth of Hungary's feast day, the Loyola Book of Saints (a wonderful book which arranges saint stories by theme!) has a lovely story about her life of giving, and Charlotte from Waltzing Matilda has a beautiful coloring sheet that you could use as well.

Happy Crafting!

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Works for Me Wednesday

A Few Saint Patrick's Day Ideas...

In the dead of dreary March when all is white (or worse--icky mucky brown!) we've been busy greenin' up the place with St. Patrick's Day just around the corner! I thought I'd share a little bit o' the Irish fun we've been having:

We've been reading lots and lots of stories about Ireland, leprechauns and the like!
(Love that library!)

The boys busily decorating paper shamrocks

Adam LOVED gluing these little shiny shamrocks...

...but not as much as he loved GLITTER GLUE!!!

more shamrock fun...

This was a great way to keep them occupied while I read some of our school materials!

We played this fun game I found on Kidssoup called "Pot O Gold." It's basically letter and number recognition Bingo--leprechaun style. The boys had to hunt for paper coins hidden in the bowl with letters and numbers written on them. If the coin corresponded to their pot o' gold card they got one step closer to winning. With each turn I sneaked in a bunch of math and phonics questions to make it extra educational. They had so much fun they wanted to play over and over again!

Luke on the prowl for gold

Gold-digger #2 :)

I also found this cute craft idea courtesy of Catholic Icing (great site for all manner of Christian crafts and recipes!) It's a shamrock bowl cut from a green soda bottle!

I've been using mine to showcase a wee bit o' leprechaun gold (i.e. chocolate coins)! :)




A fun and simple snack we made was green popcorn!

To make it just add a little (ok, well actually A LOT!) of green food coloring to your kernels.


Let sit for awhile to absorb the coloring.



Add some additional food coloring to your popping oil and pop away!



Ta-da! Sure to make any leprechaun green with envy!
(Sorry, I'm queen of the bad pun.)


What the boys loved best of all about this snack was that it made their tongues green! :)



As the legend goes, St. Patrick expelled snakes from Ireland. To go along with this story we made these little snakes. I found the inspiration for these from Oriental Trading. (They had a similar Valentine-themed bug) I LOVE finding inspiration for crafts by thumbing through their catalogues!


If you want to make them they're very simple!
You'll need:
1 pipe cleaner
1 12" strip of green craft foam
1 lg. green pompom
2 googly eyes
glue dots**

**LOVE glue dots! Can't say enough good things about them. If you don't own any you need to get yourself to a craft store and buy some stat. Seriously, they're that good.

(By-the-way, just ignore the hole punch in the picture; the pipe cleaner turned out to be pointy enough that we didn't need it.)

Bend the foam strip into s-shaped curves, poking the pipe cleaner through the center of each.


Once you're finished feeding the pipe cleaner arrange the curves, leaving a bit of extra pipe cleaner at both ends (approx. 3 inches at one end, one inch at other end). Bend each end flat to secure.


Snip about 2 inches of extra pipe cleaner to use as antennae. ( I know, I know snakes don't have antennae, right? But they look so cute! And besides, these are legendary snakes anyway. *wink*) But if you're after more anatomically correct snakes I suppose you can leave off the antennae. :p



Turn the kids loose with glue dots, pompoms, googly eyes, mini shamrocks, bits of paper and whatever else you think would look cute on your legendary (albeit anatomically incorrect) snake.


Luke's snake


Adam's snake
He decided the pompom was actually a nose rather than a head. (He's an original, I tell ya!)


Fun with thumbprint shamrocks!



Luke has a green thumb.
Get it? Get it? (See, I told you I'm all about those bad puns! It's a sickness!)


Adam has a green...er, pinky!


Once they shamrocks dried we made stems with marker.


Ta-da!
Doesn't it look so springy and cheerful?
This craft couldn't get much simpler and the boys loved it!




Anyway, those are some of things that we've been up to lately. I'd love to hear about your St. Patty's projects and ideas! :)




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Works for Me Wednesday