The Thankful Tree

It is finally Autumn, the season of Pumpkin Lattes and other fall stuff.  Besides coffee Autumn always makes me think of thankfulness and handprint crafts.  Thankfulness is pretty self explanatory, with Thanks Giving coming up and all, but I'm not sure why "handprint" crafts.  Maybe because in school teachers had more energy for crafts early in the school year, maybe because handprints lend themselves so well to autumn craft projects or maybe I'm just a tad crazy.  What ever the reason, I have been planning a Thanksgiving handprint tree for a few months.

 First we traced our hands (for the leaves)

 Then I tried to figure out a way to make the tree trunk.  There were some brown lunch sacks in with the construction paper.  So I twisted then into branches.

 Next I hot glued them in a tree shape.  Hot glue worked great, especially since I was out of tape.

 While I glued, the girls finished tracing their leaves and cutting them out.

 Next we wrote what we were thankful for on each leaf.

 Charry kept thinking up more (probably since it was bed time.)

Then we put our leaves on the tree.

Here is our work in progress, we plan to keep adding leaves and thinking up more things we are thankful for all season long.

Paper towel tube dolls

So it took me a bit to finally blog about this activity, which we did for "May the fourth be with you." I had gotten rid of all our toilet paper rolls so had to use the paper towel rolls I had been saving to make kaleidoscopes, this was easier anyways.  First we watched the lego star wars DVD, a family favorite.  Then the kids each picked a character to make.

 All I did was give them a bin of leftover craft supplies from previous activities.

My oldest (8) spent a lot of time on the details, especially the buns.

 They turned out awesome, if I do say so myself.

My younger (6) was more of a big picture girl.

I was very impressed that she drew the bun on the foam shapes.

My nephews (4 and 5) had fun, they really liked the straw sabers.  

 I loved how different they each made their dolls.  I think we make more of these.